Spring Break
Hilltop Won't Publish Print Edition for Rest of Semester
By Shauntel Lowe - Black College Wire -Issue date: 3/31/08 Section: News
A Howard University policy board decided to halt publication of a print edition, but the paper will continue publishing online as the staff tries to dig itself out of a financial crisis. "There's not enough money that would allow them to print a daily between now and the end of the year," University spokesperson Ron Harris told Black College Wire late Wednesday, March 26.
The division of student affairs has agreed to pay for a special print graduation issue in May and will pay the salaries of the staff publishing online for the rest of the school year, Harris said.
Last week, the top editor of the Hilltop, Drew Costley, said the paper owed its printer, the Washington Times, $48,000 for past printing bills. At a March 6 meeting of the paper's policy board, the decision was made to stop printing for an unspecified amount of time.
Since news broke last week about the situation, more than $20,000 has been raised for the paper by various campus departments, faculty, staff and alumni, Harris said. But the board determined it was not enough. Harris said the university is continuing to pay down the printing debt, and he did not know if the paper would be responsible for repaying the university.
In addition to the overdue printing bills, the Hilltop has had to deal with missing funds and unpaid advertising. In a March 21 interview, Costley said that the business office had not sent out invoices and tearsheets to advertisers for a month and a half during the fall, resulting in $40,000 to $45,000 in lost revenue. But on March 27, the Hilltop's business manager, Ashley Marshall, said the lost revenue, which was discussed at the latest policy board meeting, only amounted to about $10,000. Marshall, a junior majoring in legal communications, said a member of the business staff had been logging the invoices but did not physically mail them out to advertisers and was fired in part because of that.
Marshall said the real issue is not the amount of lost revenue. "We just didn't get enough revenue altogether," she said. According to Marshall, fall advertising revenue for the paper has been falling steadily since 2005, the first year the paper went daily. In fall 2005, over $149,000 worth of ads were sold. In fall, 2006 the amount was a little over $122,000. This past fall, only $86,000 worth of ads were sold, she said. These figures show a 42 percent drop in ad revenue in just two years. Marshall attributes the drop to a nationwide struggle for print publications to secure advertising and inadequate training and time for her and her staff to do ad campaigns. She said she applied for the business manager position in spring 2007 but was not hired.
In mid-August, two weeks before the start of the school year, the business manager who had been hired quit, and Marshall stepped in as an interim business manager before officially being hired in September. She said she agreed to not be paid until she was officially hired. "I was in the office every day." She said she even quit her job at the Gap in Georgetown so that she could spend more time in the Hilltop office, adding that she also took a pay cut at the beginning of the year so that her staff could be paid more. The office was not ready for the start of the school year, she said, explaining that during the summer, the business manager is paid to stay and collect revenue from the previous school year and create ad campaigns for the upcoming year, but none of that got done for this year, she said. "If I hadn't stepped up, who knows how worse the situation could have been," she said.
Marshall said she was never properly trained for the position and had to seek out advice from a past business manager. Following the initial March 6 board decision to halt publication, Marshall sent out a letter on March 14 to advertisers notifying them the paper would not publish for the rest of the year. In a previous Black College Wire story, Costley said the letter should not have been sent and was done so without his authorization. But Marshall said at the March 6 meeting, board members insisted that a letter be sent out. She said it "wasn't necessary" for Costley to see the letter before she sent it. "The real issue with the Hilltop is that there's not enough support for the financial matters of the Hilltop. When the Hilltop went daily, knowing that it was going to be a lot more fiscally strenuous on the paper, there should have been more advisers put on the board for financial purposes," Marshall said.
The division of student affairs has agreed to pay for a special print graduation issue in May and will pay the salaries of the staff publishing online for the rest of the school year, Harris said.
Last week, the top editor of the Hilltop, Drew Costley, said the paper owed its printer, the Washington Times, $48,000 for past printing bills. At a March 6 meeting of the paper's policy board, the decision was made to stop printing for an unspecified amount of time.
Since news broke last week about the situation, more than $20,000 has been raised for the paper by various campus departments, faculty, staff and alumni, Harris said. But the board determined it was not enough. Harris said the university is continuing to pay down the printing debt, and he did not know if the paper would be responsible for repaying the university.
In addition to the overdue printing bills, the Hilltop has had to deal with missing funds and unpaid advertising. In a March 21 interview, Costley said that the business office had not sent out invoices and tearsheets to advertisers for a month and a half during the fall, resulting in $40,000 to $45,000 in lost revenue. But on March 27, the Hilltop's business manager, Ashley Marshall, said the lost revenue, which was discussed at the latest policy board meeting, only amounted to about $10,000. Marshall, a junior majoring in legal communications, said a member of the business staff had been logging the invoices but did not physically mail them out to advertisers and was fired in part because of that.
Marshall said the real issue is not the amount of lost revenue. "We just didn't get enough revenue altogether," she said. According to Marshall, fall advertising revenue for the paper has been falling steadily since 2005, the first year the paper went daily. In fall 2005, over $149,000 worth of ads were sold. In fall, 2006 the amount was a little over $122,000. This past fall, only $86,000 worth of ads were sold, she said. These figures show a 42 percent drop in ad revenue in just two years. Marshall attributes the drop to a nationwide struggle for print publications to secure advertising and inadequate training and time for her and her staff to do ad campaigns. She said she applied for the business manager position in spring 2007 but was not hired.
In mid-August, two weeks before the start of the school year, the business manager who had been hired quit, and Marshall stepped in as an interim business manager before officially being hired in September. She said she agreed to not be paid until she was officially hired. "I was in the office every day." She said she even quit her job at the Gap in Georgetown so that she could spend more time in the Hilltop office, adding that she also took a pay cut at the beginning of the year so that her staff could be paid more. The office was not ready for the start of the school year, she said, explaining that during the summer, the business manager is paid to stay and collect revenue from the previous school year and create ad campaigns for the upcoming year, but none of that got done for this year, she said. "If I hadn't stepped up, who knows how worse the situation could have been," she said.
Marshall said she was never properly trained for the position and had to seek out advice from a past business manager. Following the initial March 6 board decision to halt publication, Marshall sent out a letter on March 14 to advertisers notifying them the paper would not publish for the rest of the year. In a previous Black College Wire story, Costley said the letter should not have been sent and was done so without his authorization. But Marshall said at the March 6 meeting, board members insisted that a letter be sent out. She said it "wasn't necessary" for Costley to see the letter before she sent it. "The real issue with the Hilltop is that there's not enough support for the financial matters of the Hilltop. When the Hilltop went daily, knowing that it was going to be a lot more fiscally strenuous on the paper, there should have been more advisers put on the board for financial purposes," Marshall said.
Be the first to comment on this story