Facing a projected budget deficit of more than $300,000 at the
end of the school year, the ASUCLA Communications Board, which
oversees all of UCLA Student Media, discussed the possibility of
initiating a student fee referendum at its meeting Monday
night.
The board discussed placing the referendum on the ballot in the
spring to ask students to pay a small fee per quarter to fund all
student media organizations.
Currently, the most significant items contributing to the budget
shortfall are collapse of advertising sales, underselling of
yearbooks, and increased costs of printing, said Student Media
director Arvli Ward.
As of the end of December, Student Media’s financial
losses amounted to $55,000.
The worst case scenario, he projected, is a deficit of $315,000
by the end of the academic school year.
Together with higher costs of paper and trouble with yearbook
sales, Ward said display and classified advertising have been
“at risk for years.”
“The sense of urgency is pretty clear,” said Ty
Tosdale, graduate student and chairman of the Communications Board.
“It tells us that we need the assistance of ASUCLA and the
university to make it through this transition.” If passed,
the referendum would signal the return of Student Media to partial
dependence on university or student funding, as it was between 1962
and 1987.
Student Media, which includes the Daily Bruin, stopped receiving
money from the students in 1987 when Chancellor Charles E. Young
decided the organizations could be financially self-sufficient.
In recent years, however, Student Media has had difficulty
generating sufficient revenue.
“It looks like our current sales won’t be able to
fund the current level of operation,” Ward said.
“We’re looking for outside funding. But this is the
first conversation, so we don’t know what shape it’ll
be.”
The board discussed short-term options, including filing for an
emergency loan, maximizing advertising revenue, constraining
current expenses, and further cutting the circulation of the Daily
Bruin.
The long-term goal, however, is to “adapt the organization
to the changing publishing environment,” Ward said.
“We’re like the rest of the world, feeling the
effects of changing media consumption and the migration of ad
dollars out of fundamental newspaper things like classifieds to the
Internet,” Ward said.
In January, the Daily Bruin reduced its Monday through Thursday
circulation of 14,000 copies per day by 1,000 copies per day as a
reflection of a large amount of readership that has shifted
online.
In order to deal with this shift to a larger online readership,
priorities outlined by the board focused on examining other online
advertising options, including classified, housing and job-search
sites.