For those who may not know, The Daily Universe, the BYU newspaper that I worked at for pretty much my whole college career, is moving from a daily to a weekly. To make matters worse, they also decided to fire the full-time Daily Universe staff, many of which were good friends of mine.
I'm not at BYU anymore, so I don't know all the details of this, but I have been reading quite a bit about it and everything just makes me more mad and depressed. The most infuriating part in all this is the conflicting and near-hypocritical messages coming from the BYU faculty. For years, BYU proudly boasted of the award-winning Daily Universe and used it as a hallmark to show how strong its journalism program was. Now, it's suddenly become "an expensive heirloom."
The topic of finances is also a tricky and confusing one. The faculty continues to vehemently argue that this move was mostly for the students and the ever-changing curriculum, yet they can't stop themselves from talking about how much money the DU has been losing. But the DU is a lab, right? So why is money so important? I spent so much time at BYU learning how essential journalism is to society, and now that same school is telling me it's not financially sustainable. Why can't the faculty take a courageous stand and keep the paper going for journalism's sake?
They didn't have to take such a drastic action. They could have simply started printing 10,000 less copies each day, or cut one or two staff positions instead of all of them. Or they could have asked BYU for funding. I might be completely wrong about this, but I always thought the DU was supported by ad revenue. If it wasn't receiving any money from BYU, then it should have been an independent voice. But it wasn't. It was always concerned with offending or potentially putting BYU in a negative light. So since it has already been little more than a PR publication of BYU, then it should receive BYU funding to continue to allow students to work on a daily newspaper.
But BYU has never really liked The Daily Universe, and I don't think I need to start rehashing all the reasons why. Suffice it to say, I never really felt like the DU was an environment where reporters could freely report on what they wanted. I also felt like I could never really complain about any editorial decisions because a) I didn't know who to complain to, b) I felt like nothing would change regardless of my opinion, and c) I was legitimately worried about losing my job if I made the wrong remark at the wrong time to the wrong person. When you think about it, that is not a very healthy workplace environment.
I now find it ironic how some of the faculty are upset with being criticized by their students. They were the ones who taught the students to think critically and skeptically, so they shouldn't be surprised when this thought process is applied toward them. For being the communications department, they sure don't know how to communicate very well. I never really understood where they were coming from, and I never felt like they understood where we as students were coming from. All too often, some faculty member who I had never seen do anything with the DU would come in and make some arbitrary decision without realizing how things really worked in the newsroom, especially at night when everyone but the copy desk is gone. Usually these decisions were stupid, but harmless, like insisting the TV should always show the DU website to somehow inspire the reporters to write better stories somehow. But sometimes they would be pretty annoying.
One thing I complained about quite a bit was the Wordpress thing. The theory behind it was to get stories online immediately, which is a nice idea. Except it didn't happen. Stories still weren't published until 4 or 5 p.m. and my job as a copy editor only became more difficult. More often, I would come into work and have nothing to do because I had to wait for someone to pull the stories from Wordpress to give to me. Then we would make edits on the story and had to go back and replace the story that was already online or just leave the unedited version. And don't even get me started with all the technical difficulties it went through. The system didn't work because it was forced on the newsroom by people outside the newsroom. At least that's how I perceived it.
The Daily Universe had plenty of problems. One of them was the very nature of the paper being a lab. More than half the reporters each semester didn't care and it showed. No amount of editing can cover up a reporter who is only there for the class credit. Another thing that always bugged me was how the front page wasn't decided until 3:30 p.m. that day. We almost never had any advance notice to plan anything neat or design interesting graphics. Yet despite all that The Daily Universe was still a great paper that continually won award after award. And despite all the complaints and frustrations I had with the DU, I stuck with it because I enjoyed it. So to try to get rid of the negativity, I'll end this rambling post with some fond memories.
The first time I made the front page was with a story about fantasy sports, which inspired someone to write a letter to the editor to complain about trivial stories being on the front. This only made me happy, because it showed that people were paying attention.
I loved covering the basketball team (Jackson Emery was one of my favorites to interview) and sitting next to women's coach Jeff Judkins during the games. I still remember the nervous thrill of covering my first Jazz game.
I laughed when an extremely sad and confused fan called the DU to ask us why Max Hall said he hated Utah. I was sad when cross country stories I wrote didn't make it in the paper and their coach would call and complain.
One of my most thrilling moments in the newsroom was when Alex Hairston jumped up and shouted, "Riley Nelson's out for the season!" Right behind that was Alex's exclusive interview with O'Neill Chambers. The most devastating moments for me in the newsroom were the retirement of Jerry Sloan and Brandon Davies' honor code violation.
I loved calling Chelsea's headlines dumb and just messing around with everyone — even when they called me Dylan. I will miss talking NBA with Rich and finding out how big of jerk Hubie Brown is.
Some of my best work came from working long nights (without being paid) and churning out some great sports stuff with Brandon. Jimmermania, the NBA Draft, the "Rivery" Guide, and more were some really nice things that people really did read. Whenever Jimmer was on front, paper stands would empty by noon. Only Harry Potter and Osama Bin Laden inspired that kind of readership.
My all time greatest memory with the DU will definitely be my trip to Mississippi with Professor Carter and Luke Hansen. It was a once-in-a-liftetime opportunity and it deeply saddens me when I think that future students may not have that same opportunity.
So goodbye DU. Stop talking about exciting new opportunities and giving the readers the news the way they want it. Students don't want to take the time to log on to universe.byu.edu. Stop saying this will allow you to have more "long form journalism" — that doesn't even mean anything. This is a bad move, so don't try to make it sound good for all our sakes.
Of course, the answer to this dilemma was right in front of us all along. If the DU increased its sports coverage and wrote more entertaining stuff, maybe it could have got better ads and stayed alive. More in-depth coverage of the basketball and football teams would have been better than stories about folk dance in Poland and Hungary. Maybe sports could have saved The Daily Universe.
