The Daily Cal Downfall?
Posted on August 26, 2008
Filed Under The Daily Prereq | By Max Baumgarten
Without getting too sentimental (or too bitter, which is possible), I just want to point out a rather disheartening development. UC Berkeley’s award-winning independent student-newspaper The Daily Californian (a paper which I worked for during my college years) has been hit with falling advertising revenue and will no longer be publishing a Wednesday print edition and will cut back the staff size in addition to their compensation.
No one should be shocked to hear that college print media is having trouble keeping up with their online counterparts, look what has happened to the big guns at the LA Times or the Chicago Tribune as of late. In all honesty, I probably wouldn’t be at this gig if it weren’t for my college journalism experience, it seems to me that the Daily Cal cutbacks is more than just your typical “print versus new media” saga.
As Daily Cal E.I.C. Bryan Thomas notes, “Our primary mission [at The Daily Cal] has always been to train the next generation of superior journalists and media industry professionals-a mission which we excel at fulfilling.” But let’s assume that college newspapers aren’t going to have the funds to prep aspiring journalists in the fine art of fact-checking. While blogs are surely equipped with wit and personality, we might be entering a post-print era sans AP style guides and preposterous deadlines. And even though universities might be willing to fund student newspapers, the journalistic integrity is consequently compromised.
Tear…. for the sake of nostalgia.
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