The slow-motion train wreck derisively known as the Oregon state budget process has claimed many victims and will claim many more – some of them big and obvious, others small and obscure.
In the second category, put The Broadside, the student newspaper of Central Oregon Community College.
The Broadside hasn’t actually fallen victim yet, but the axe is poised to drop. If the state’s voters don’t approve a temporary income tax increase in January and/or the state’s budget deficit gets worse, COCC will need to cut $3 million from its $22 million annual operating budget. The college already has announced that The Broadside is a prime candidate for the chopping block, along with theater arts.
My knowledge of theater arts extends only about as far as renting DVDs from Blockbuster, so I don’t feel qualified to comment about the merits of that program.
But I do know a little about journalism, and about The Broadside in particular. And I think killing off this almost-50-year-old campus institution would be a damn shame.
Founded in 1953, The Broadside has had a colorful past, to put it mildly. It’s had its ups and downs, good years and bad, and its share of controversy. Back during the Gulf War (the one fought by Poppy Bush), an anti-military cartoon almost sparked a lynch mob.
After that episode the paper went through a turbulent period in which it had a series of advisers, including, for several years, me. (Let me hasten to add that I have no connection with the paper now and do not intend to have any in the future.)
These days, though, the paper seems to have gotten its act together. Under the leadership of adviser Jan Volz, it’s become an attractively laid-out, colorful, competently written tabloid of a dozen pages or so. The masthead lists a student staff of about 20 (roughly 10 times as many as the paper had during my era).
Obviously, the paper means a lot to these people. But a good college newspaper – any good college newspaper – means a lot to the whole college community.
It’s a sounding board for opinions, a source of information about events and policies the off-campus media don’t cover, and a watchdog on the administration.
Maybe more important than all of that, it’s a source of identity for the college. At a college like COCC, where only a handful of students live on-campus and there are no intercollegiate sports, it may well be the ONLY source of identity – the only thing the students, faculty and staff really have in common.
Ron Paradis, COCC’s director of public information, explained that the college itself pays only the Broadside adviser’s salary and benefits, totaling $22,500. (Operating expenses are paid out of the student activity fund, funded with student fees.)
The math is so simple, George W. Bush could do it, probably even without a calculator: $22,500 is roughly one-tenth of 1 percent of COCC’s $22 million budget. And it’s only about seven-tenths of 1 percent of the $3 million COCC says it needs to cut.
Surely the cunning budget-tweakers at COCC should be able to sharpen their pencils and find enough other cuttable expenses – some new software here, some new office furniture there – to make up the $22,500.
Maybe that will actually happen. Paradis said a panel is reviewing the proposed cuts and will come out with a report in a couple of weeks. Maybe it will find a way to save The Broadside.
If not, here’s a thought: There are about 16 news outlets in Central Oregon, counting The Bugle, The Bulletin, the Source, Cascade Business News, KTVZ, the radio stations and the weekly newspapers in outlying Central Oregon communities. What if each of them chipped in a little to pay the adviser and keep The Broadside going?
If the shares were divided equally, we’d be talking about a contribution of exactly $1,406.25 from each news outlet. (Yeah, I had to use a calculator for that one.) I don’t think that’d be enough to drive any of them into bankruptcy court.
And if the media management wasn’t willing to pick up the whole tab, how about if the professional journalists in Central Oregon also kicked in as individuals? There must be at least a couple hundred of us; a contribution of 50 bucks each would raise almost half the needed amount.
Okay, it’s an unorthodox idea – weird, even. But these are weird times we’re living in. With our team in Salem striking out so consistently, the rest of us just might have to step up to the plate.
