College of Liberal Arts Dean Gerry Riposa walked out of a meeting Friday morning with journalism department faculty rather than talk to students and press who were present regarding a proposed feasibility study of putting the Daily Forty-Niner online only.
“I thought I was invited to a brainstorming session with the faculty,” Riposa said later that day. “When I meet with the press I like to be prepared. When I went down there, I didn’t even have a clipboard.”
The study, which will be funded by the College of Liberal Arts and was initiated by Riposa, would gauge whether the Daily Forty-Niner would be better suited to be an online-only newspaper in an effort to lessen the printing costs of the newspaper, according to William Babcock, chairman of the journalism department.
“There are many different alternatives [of forms of the newspaper],” Riposa said. “There are some who want strictly print, some who want more electronic and one edition of print, a few who want both and some who want electronic form only. … Maybe it’s my political science background, but first I make a hypothesis, then I do research, then I make conclusions.”
The Daily Forty-Niner has been largely sustained by its print ad revenue since becoming independent from the journalism department in 2003. In recent years, when the Daily Forty-Niner has gone over its budget, CLA supplemented the costs incurred by the paper, which usually ran between $20,000 and $30,000, according to Beverly Munson, the Daily Forty-Niner general manager.
Last year, Douglas Robinson, the vice president of Student Services, gave the Daily Forty-Niner about $29,000 to help meet its expenses, which left the Daily Forty-Niner with a surplus of $544 in its account.
“Half a percent of our ad revenue comes from online [advertisements],” said Munson. “If the Forty-Niner were to go online only, it would have about $500 ad revenue annually. We’re not ready for this. We’re not ready to go online only.”
Daily Forty-Niner Editor in Chief Bradley Zint also agreed that a move to going online only would be premature and would badly affect the newspaper.
“There’s the saying that someone is cutting the legs right out from under you. Well, they’re cutting us up to our necks – and beyond,” said Zint.
Cal State Long Beach President F. King Alexander has been supportive of both a print and electronic edition of the newspaper.
“I heard that question of whether it should be online or not. I think it’s important to have a paper newspaper and to be online,” Alexander said in an August interview. He reiterated that point Friday afternoon.
After Riposa left, the journalism faculty voted unanimously to make future meetings regarding the fate of Daily Forty-Niner in public forums with students present.
The print circulation of the Daily Forty-Niner is 10,000, distributed Monday through Thursday. The newspaper’s website receives an average of 700 to 900 hits a day.
The Daily Forty-Niner maintained an online edition using the CSULB servers from 1994 to 2006. During the summer of 2006, the Daily Forty-Niner website began posting its new content off the campus server to Daily49er.com, using the services provided by the Boston-based company College Publisher.
