The California budget mess has now sadly claimed a college media victim: The Bulletin, the student newspaper at California State University, Dominguez Hills. It has been axed, a victim not for its journalistic value but its costs.
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Specifically, budget cuts throughout the CSU system have precipitated the Bulletin‘s disappearing act, leaving CSU Dominguez Hills as the only school within the system without a campus paper. According to one report: “University officials last spring had sought to cut $16.1 million from the school’s budget, much of which was made up through a 30 percent tuition hike and imposing unpaid staff furloughs on some Fridays and Mondays. Slashing the Bulletin saved the university $76,000 annually, which included printing costs, along with a part-time newspaper adviser, a layout artist and a journalist-in-residence who acted as a writing coach for the student staff.”
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Save the Bulletin options being bandied about include going online-only (right now, the Web site is just an online repository for the print edition), upping the advertising revenue, and switching from a paid outside layout staffer to a student team who will do it for free.
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For now though, the campus newsstands stand empty, and talk about the newspaper is a mix of reflection and anticipation. The Bulletin adviser: “I can’t tell you how many success stories we’ve had with this paper. Hopefully it’ll be back.”
