[July 04, 2011] Students fighting CNU plan to eliminate student newspaper print edition in 2012 Tweet NEWPORT NEWS, Jun 07, 2011 (Daily Press - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- This upcoming school year could be the last for the print edition of the Captain's Log, the student newspaper at Christopher Newport University. Administrators informed staff last month that the weekly print edition might be cut in 2012-2013 as part of a campus-wide "green" initiative. The student newspaper staff and CNU's Student Media Board believe the proposal is based on the administration's dislike of articles published over the past year, said Terry Lee, faculty advisor of the paper for 17 years. Lee said that in February, CNU Provost Mark Padilla told him the administration views the paper's editors as "scandal mongers," considers the paper distasteful and unethical, and that its news stories have had a negative effect on recruiting faculty. The Captain's Log has pursued investigative journalism for the first time this year, Lee said, a stark change from its usual feature reporting and writing. Staff took heat for it all year, Lee said, including being "vilified by their own classmates" for reporting on a fraternity that was suspended after a student nearly died of alcohol poisoning. Captain's Log editor Emily Cole, a rising senior and Daily Press intern, said administrators have not cited any specific articles that upset them. "We publish what's newsworthy," she said, "such as if it's harder to get a job after graduating from CNU compared with a bigger school; about a fraternity suspended from campus; about the admissions' office accidentally sending acceptance emails to 2,000 students not necessarily accepted." CNU Spokeswoman Lori Jacobs wrote in an email to the Student Press Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy organization that CNU contacted about the issue, that the administration "neither likes nor dislikes the student newspaper." No action has been taken yet to eliminate the print edition of the paper, Jacobs wrote in an e-mail to the Daily Press. Doing so would follow CNU's "green" initiative that so far has included reducing or eliminating the use of paper in student applications, course catalogs, campus directories and other items. "Fourteen months from now, it is our hope that The Captain's Log will be online only," Jacobs said. "If The Captain's Log wishes to continue to print newspapers, the cost will be borne by advertising revenues." Matthew Davenport is a rising senior and chair of the Student Media Board, which works as a neutral liaison between student journalists and the administration. He said the administration telling the Captain's Log it would fund stipends for editors -- which ad revenue is currently used for -- and then to use ad revenue to print the paper on its own is "creative accounting." "The same amount of paper would be used; it's just the Captain's Log paying for it instead of CNU," he said. "It's not green; it's a lie." Lee, the newspaper faculty adviser, said the administration is also attempting to dissolve the Student Media Board into a student club, stripping it of its budgetary oversight of student media. It also cut funding for this fall for two campus literary magazines, "Currents" and "Limelights," which the Student Media Board allocates funds to. Davenport said keeping the 40-year-old publications alive would force the board to spread its budget thinner by taking away money from the Captain's Log, which is fully funded for 2011. Cole said she is already pinching pennies out of fear that funding for its print edition will go away sooner than fall 2012. She cut the summer edition from 12 pages to eight and is limiting color ink to the front and back pages. It costs $26,000 a year to print the paper, she said. If the administration cuts funding for the print contract, ad revenue will only pay for about two print editions a month and no editor stipends, she said. Cole said she has submitted Virginia Freedom of Information Act requests to the president, provost, and dean of students asking for any and all correspondence they've had over the past calendar year regarding the Captain's Log, and will take the next steps from there. Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said there are First Amendment concerns whenever a college defunds its student newspaper soon after complaining about its content. "There are certainly indications that the (CNU) administration dislikes the newspaper, believes that it portrays the university unfavorably and would be happy if it went away," LoMonte said. If the motive is to have fewer people read the paper, LoMonte said eliminating the print edition would do the trick. Every newspaper that has switched to online-only has seen dramatic drops in readership, he said. "People just don't find the newspaper online the way they find it when it's right in front of their eyes in a rack on campus," he said. To see the Captain's Log online, visit http://www.thecaptainslog.org. To see more of the Daily Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dailypress.com. Copyright (c) 2011, Daily Press, Newport News, Va. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]