Stentor the latest victim of newspaper mismanagement
Issue date: 5/7/09 Section: Opinion
To the administration:
It has been said that times are tough at newspapers around the country. But sometimes, it has to be questioned whether some of those problems have nothing to do with readership and content and all to do with poor management.
Here in Chicago, the purchase of Tribune Company by billionaire Sam Zell funneled billions of dollars of debt into the company, making it impossible for the company's flagship newspaper to stay afloat without massive cuts. And earlier this year, Denver and Seattle became one-newspaper towns, which some observers blamed on the poorly coordinated joint operating agreements that the now-former Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer operated under.
But this poor management is not limited to big cities. The latest victim appears to be The Stentor, the weekly student newspaper at Lake Forest College. This past Thursday morning, Stentor Editor-in-Chief Kyle P. Meredith and News Editor Justin Tardiff received an e-mail from College President Steve Schutt, alerting us that the adviser for The Stentor, Fern Schumer Chapman, would not be retained for the next academic year.
Fern has a wealth of knowledge about journalistic writing and the newspaper industry in general. A graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, a former writer for the Chicago Tribune, a former professor of magazine writing courses at both Medill and Lake Forest, and an accomplished author, Fern brings a great deal of experience and professionalism to The Stentor, and has helped us win many awards from the Illinois College Press Association. President Schutt also indicated that she has done a "commendable job." Apparently, this is not good enough.
The situation is being blamed on a time of "budget stress" at the College, which would make sense, to an extent. But Fern is not an expendable figure. The situation would be more understandable if the President were to replace Fern with a member of the Lake Forest College faculty with similar experience in the field of journalism. However, no such figure exists, and one of the candidates "invited" to become The Stentor adviser had never even written for his college newspaper.
It has been said that times are tough at newspapers around the country. But sometimes, it has to be questioned whether some of those problems have nothing to do with readership and content and all to do with poor management.
Here in Chicago, the purchase of Tribune Company by billionaire Sam Zell funneled billions of dollars of debt into the company, making it impossible for the company's flagship newspaper to stay afloat without massive cuts. And earlier this year, Denver and Seattle became one-newspaper towns, which some observers blamed on the poorly coordinated joint operating agreements that the now-former Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer operated under.
But this poor management is not limited to big cities. The latest victim appears to be The Stentor, the weekly student newspaper at Lake Forest College. This past Thursday morning, Stentor Editor-in-Chief Kyle P. Meredith and News Editor Justin Tardiff received an e-mail from College President Steve Schutt, alerting us that the adviser for The Stentor, Fern Schumer Chapman, would not be retained for the next academic year.
Fern has a wealth of knowledge about journalistic writing and the newspaper industry in general. A graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, a former writer for the Chicago Tribune, a former professor of magazine writing courses at both Medill and Lake Forest, and an accomplished author, Fern brings a great deal of experience and professionalism to The Stentor, and has helped us win many awards from the Illinois College Press Association. President Schutt also indicated that she has done a "commendable job." Apparently, this is not good enough.
The situation is being blamed on a time of "budget stress" at the College, which would make sense, to an extent. But Fern is not an expendable figure. The situation would be more understandable if the President were to replace Fern with a member of the Lake Forest College faculty with similar experience in the field of journalism. However, no such figure exists, and one of the candidates "invited" to become The Stentor adviser had never even written for his college newspaper.
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