A Student Publications Committee meeting Thursday outlined the current performances of student publications and money saving tips to deal with proposed budget cuts to the University’s state funding.
The Student Publications department discussed ways they have saved money, as well as ideas to save more money. Reducing printing and distribution costs were some ideas proposed during the meeting.
According to the official meeting agenda, the annual cost to produce The Daily Cougar is almost $194,000 with UH Printing and Postal. However, by switching over to Southeast Media Printing, the annual cost will change to $143,100, a difference of more than $50,000.
Plans to cease printed versions of Friday editions of The Daily Cougar were also discussed.
A vote has been scheduled for later in the semester. Should the change be approved, the publication would switch to being strictly online for the day.
Advertising Manager Delores Crawford said, “there are such few students on campus on Fridays,” as a reason for the possible changes.
Notes on the agenda read that “eliminating the Friday publication and switching printers to Southeast Media could save as much as $70,000 to $80,000 from our current printing product.”
Financial Coordinator Candy Littleton said Student Publications has managed to save $146,000 this year.
“Utilities are down by 50 percent. If everything goes well, our expenses will be down by $179,000 by the end of the year,” Littleton said.
Associate Vice President for Student Affairs David Small said a new plan needs to be developed as the University enters a new fiscal year.
“Advertising is down, we’re down by about $40,000,” Small said. “We have to find ways to cut costs. Numbers in advertising are down significantly.”
Jack Wehman, editor-in-chief of The Daily Cougar said, “March has been the most successful month for The Daily Cougar. We’ve seen more comments on the website and the paper has been doing great.”
Houstonian editor Patricia Estrada provided updates on the yearbook, stating that only 14 of 300 student organizations have sent in materials for inclusion in the Houstonian.
“Some have said they are interested but have not sent in their materials yet. We have also spread awareness of the yearbook.”
The Student Publications Committee is charged with approving budgets, student salary commissions, contracts, advertising rates, subscription rates, financial reports and editorial and advertising policies.
If there's no more Friday edition printout, then there's a wider gap of 3 days without news coverage as far as print goes. Why not Wednesday or Tuesday, to make it a smaller gap?
I didn't see it mentioned in the article, but I also suspect you could save more money by cutting low-performing drop-off locations where it doesn't seem practical to keep delivering too. It might be more inconvenient for the few people that might pick up a copy at the location, but that's life. I always see several copies by the end of the day that never get picked up in certain spots.
Not so sure about saving $50K by switching from a campus-run service to an outsider is good for UH. Is there not a way you can negotiate or see why the UH Printing and Postal can't explain or reduce the $50K extra of comparative service?
Just a personal opinion, but maybe an online-only format would be best. Virtually everyone on the campus probably has to have some Internet access to do stuff on Vista Blackboard, VNET, or whatever and do other web research online, so almost anyone can access the paper online. It's eco-friendlier too. Plus comments, color pictures, and less trash are always a plus.
You have no idea how many people read the Daily Cougar print copy – probably an order of magnitude more than those who read it exclusively online. It would be folly to switch to an online-only format.
On the yearbook side, I think it'd help if they weren't offering to give away an expensive Apple iPad in a drawing for yearbook buyers. Why not offer a sweet incremental discount for every year (maybe in a 4 yr. period) every time you buy the yearbook? Maybe pay in full this year, 5% off for next years, 10% off the following, and maybe 20% max on the 4th year.
To be honest, I've never even seen the yearbook of recent years, and I think more people would be willing to buy something if they can get a chance to have a glance at recent years of yearbooks to get an idea of whether they might want to invest in it.
Also, I think more people would be encouraged to buy a yearbook if they knew for sure that a non-portrait photo of them was featured on one of the splash pages. A person wants a yearbook for memories, and if there's almost no photos of the person or his/her's friends, then it's not exactly worth buying for many. Just some thoughts.