The UB Post

After 75 years as the school's official student newspaper, The UB Post is working toward the status of "independent student newspaper for the University of Baltimore."

Simply put, this means that the newspaper will support itself financially, administration will have no control over the paper's content or operations and staff will have complete freedom of expression and speech.

Independence would also afford us the opportunity to provide UB students with "real world" experience practicing journalism.

Over the past year, several significant incidents between The UB Post and administration have occurred. While administration has not necessarily censored the newspaper, they have pressed us to curb, or suppress, our stories. To practice objectivity and freedom of expression in the newsroom, administration cannot have a role in deciding whether or not to run a story.

At last spring's Block Party, several Post staff members were publicly scolded for taking a photo of an injured teenage boy. As a friendly journalism reminder: at a public university, all property is public, which means that anyone can be photographed at any time without newspaper staff receiving permission from the subject. Also, anything said in a public forum can be considered "on the record" and permission is not required to print.

Another incident occurred at a resource fair when an administrator asked Post staff not to put the current issue of the paper out because it was "so negative." While this request may seem mild, the act was a form of institutional censorship.

On more than one occasion and in different means, administrators have told me, "Not everything we do needs to be public knowledge." Wrong. Everything said and done at a public university is, and should be, public knowledge. This newspaper and its staff do not want to be considered an arm of the university's public relations department.

While we do not presume that administration will open their doors and welcome our reporters in, we do ask for the same respect and professional courtesy that is offered to The Sun and the Baltimore Business Journal.

Currently, the Center for Student Involvement (CSI) oversees both the newspaper and the student government. Structurally, this raises several concerns for the newspaper. The director of CSI is also the student government adviser. CSI, as an administrative office, does not have the same priorities as the newspaper. Often, our stories are critical of the student governments or administration. The way that other student organizations work with administration does not work for a newspaper.

An independent newspaper should not cause the university concern. Organizational independence would reduce the university's liability if a libel or slander suit was brought against the newspaper.

According to Neil Ralston, Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) vice president for campus chapter affairs, "A plaintiff may try to include the school in a suit, but so far no court in the country has let someone sue a public college for libel over the content of an independent student publication."

For readers, independence would mean that the university, and its students, would no longer provide operational funds to the newspaper; we would be completely financed by advertising income. Currently, The UB Post receives an allotment of the collected student activity fees.

Readers can continue to expect in-depth stories and wide coverage of the campus community with nothing censored and free of bias.

Becoming independent requires a lot of help. We are not looking to re-invent the wheel; we are not trying to figure this out from scratch. The SPJ is working with us to set up an organization model to make an independent student newspaper work for the UB community as they have done with other universities.

Our colleagues at The Towerlight, Towson University's student newspaper, are also going to work with us to reach our goal of becoming financially independent, just as they did in 1991.

Achieving independence is not something that is going to happen overnight. It will take some time. As we work toward this goal, we would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Sincerely,
Nedra Cruz, editor in chief
nedra.cruz@ubalt.edu

Article Tools