Last Tuesday, for the first time, nearly all of the editorial staff from the Daily Forty-Niner met with Dean of the College of Liberal Arts Gerry Riposa. During the meeting, Riposa and our staff discussed our budget overruns, the technical status of the paper’s independence and, ultimately, what will happen to the Daily Forty-Niner after the much-dreaded feasibility study.
I’ve met with Riposa before regarding the announcement of the study, and I noticed the same thing yesterday that I did the first time I met him: Gerry Riposa is a human being.
He has revolutionary art on his bright red walls, wears blue jeans to work and – my newest discovery – judging by the miniature club cards on his key chain, shops at both Petco and what I think was Ralphs.
He has a stern demeanor, but, unlike other administrators, doesn’t come off as disingenuous. He doesn’t bullshit us or try to act like he is our best friend. He doesn’t pretend that we’re not going out for drinks after meetings. He’s candid, honest and businesslike – something I appreciate.
Unlike other administrators and student representatives who are sitting on their hands and shrugging their shoulders as to how to deal with the problem of Forty-Niner debt and institutional inefficiencies, he wants to do something. Unfortunately, some of the suggested solutions may hurt newspaper staff.
But what Riposa wants is an unbiased study to assess what we can do to be a more efficient newspaper with better content to better serve students. What’s so wrong with that?
Riposa doesn’t know a lot about the functioning of a newspaper, but was candid with the staff enough to admit it. He didn’t claim to know things he didn’t know about and was (or at least seemed to be) receptive to what we were saying.
He wants the journalism department to better reflect the shift toward online media without cutting print journalism classes entirely. He wants the future generations of Daily Forty-Niner staff to be adequately prepared with what may be the eventual future of journalism. Maybe I’m a sap, but I believed the guy.
When we talked about the importance of clips, he at some points actually said, “Wow, I didn’t know that.” I was floored. An important, high-ranking person on this campus actually admitted to not knowing more than he actually did.
Riposa is trying to get an understanding of what is important to Daily Forty-Niner staffers and journalism students.
He has a point that the College of Liberal Arts shouldn’t be footing the bill when the entire university benefits from having a good newspaper.
It is the responsibility of the entire university to support a newspaper. University support is a fundamental need for a daily print publication, and very few daily campus newspapers survive on ad revenue alone.
If Riposa does finally have a study performed, he will learn the same thing we’ve been insisting: Our school needs a print publication and a better online portal, but our department need to be instructed with how to be more Web-savvy through instruction in the journalism department.
For any writer, or other kind of journalism trying to get a job, clips are essential to employers. Employers want to see that a potential writer was and is worth ink. The online version can be polished and refined at any time.
Hiring editors want to be able to read something that shows a journalist can get the job done under deadline and deliver well-written copy. Without a print edition, page designers would be non-existent.
It would be impossible to have an effective and functioning journalism program without a legitimate print newspaper to keep the university community informed.
P.S. – My apologies to The King and The Prince for last week’s column. I know you are doing your jobs, and I respect that. I am just trying to do mine, too.
Lauren Williams is a senior journalism and political science major, the managing editor for the Daily Forty-Niner and a weekly contributor.