The University is slashing the Daily Trojan’s budget, and we’re not allowed to do anything about it. 

It’s not for a lack of effort, but because the University refuses to give us a seat at our own table. While students control the editorial content of the paper, we have no control of our finances. In fact, we have never seen the Daily Trojan’s budget.

At the start of this semester, we were told we may no longer be able to print daily. Administrators never spoke to us directly, and we only found out the semester’s definitive print schedule nine days before we published our first regular issue. Now, we face the same uncertainty about the spring semester.

We are far from the only organization on campus facing budget cuts, but we struggle to rationalize why the University denies us the opportunity to address it. We have ideas to fundraise; we are writing this because we want to help. We want to be active participants in the conversation and work toward solutions, but we cannot do this without financial transparency from the University. 

We could sell merch, host high school journalism workshops or organize contests, as many other college papers do. Despite spending a semester crafting and proposing our plans for selling merch, including designing logos and contacting distributors, we were barred from doing so based on the University’s financial policies around handling payments. 

We deserve the financial agency not just to maintain a daily print schedule, but also to ensure that we can continue to be a uniquely valuable voice for the USC community. With our fundraising money, we will increase resources for all areas of the paper, including our multimedia sections such as Podcasts, Online as well as our Copy desk.

Our editorial process involves rigorous fact-checking and editing. Our daily print circulation captures continuous coverage on a physical medium that expands access to information critical to our community. At a time when news organizations are slashing copy desks across the country and media outlets, both student and professional, are ending print production, these characteristics are part of what we want to protect.

Just last spring, when administrators closed campus off to the general public, we were the only editorially independent news organization allowed on campus, as well as a primary source for various Los Angeles and national news outlets. For the majority of April and May, we covered the Gaza Solidarity Occupation and its impacts. 

In March, the Daily Trojan broke the news that USC eliminated the Academic Achievement Award. After student outrage followed our coverage, the University reinstated AAA.

We also covered issues with recognized student organizations’ funding and registration, pro-Armenia student protests, numerous unionizations across the University with our labor beat and the protests against Sigma Nu in Fall 2021 as well as the ripple effects across the almost-defunct Interfraternity Council. 

At the Daily Trojan, we have nearly 300 staffers across all our sections, ranging from traditional print components to our social media and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion sections. Students can find a space in Sports, Arts & Entertainment, Data, Arts & Design and more. The letters to the editor in our Opinion section lend a crucial space for the community to make their voices heard on a regular basis. Honoring the surrounding South Central community, which is 80% Latine, we created the Spanish-language supplement in Spring 2023. 

We are not only a news outlet but a crucial and vibrant part of the University. And for that, we owe every single student giving their time and effort to this organization.

Editors typically work over 20 hours weekly and receive small “appreciation honorariums,” which amount to about two dollars per hour. Yet we are barred from referring to our positions as employment or describing our pay as wages. Throughout our code of ethics, we are not allowed to include any mention of wages. 

At other student newspapers, editors earn minimum wage. The Stanford Daily’s status as a 501(c)(3) organization, which they acquired in 1973, allows them full editorial and financial freedom from Stanford. 

The university pays The Daily a semesterly subscription fee, and their student government gives the paper a fraction of students’ Student Activities Fee, paid in their tuition. However, this doesn’t begin to cover the costs of The Daily’s operation — fundraising initiatives by The Daily, such as workshops for high school students, have allowed them to profit as an organization, Stanford Daily Chief Operating Officer Emma Talley said. 

By establishing financial independence, managing their own ads and creating fundraising initiatives, The Stanford Daily pays its 30 senior editors $16 an hour.

We strive to one day better compensate our staff in proportion to how much they work. However, we are turned away every time we try to improve our financial situation.

In an effort to raise funds, we began including a donation plug at the bottom of our articles in Fall 2023. This semester, Student Life — which oversees Student Publications, and the Daily Trojan by extension — reached out requesting we remove the word “compensated” from the description. Sanitizing the language in this way encroaches on our editorial independence. 

We are not the first Daily Trojan leaders to seek transparency. 

In 2006, University administrators blocked the reelection of the Daily Trojan’s fall editor in chief-elect, Zach Fox. After being successfully voted in by his peers for the spring semester, Fox sought details about the newspaper’s budget from the University. 

Fox, along with DT alumni, alleged that administrators halted his application because of his plans to officially change his duties as well as asking for details about the budget, the Los Angeles Times reported.

USC spokesman James Grant told the L.A. Times there was no connection between Fox’s budget inquiry and the decision to stop his application — despite the administration ultimately denying the budget request.

As described in an op-ed co-published Dec. 5, 2006 by the L.A. Times, the Daily Trojan and more than a dozen other college newspapers, each editor in chief-elect must obtain “approval” from University leaders — a direct affront to Daily Trojan’s democratic process and yet another example of undue control over an allegedly independent publication. 

Although the op-ed was published nearly 20 years ago, the words of our frustrated predecessors still resonate strongly with us in this never-ending limbo of secrecy.

“Regardless of the formal level of independence of the paper, a meddling administration undermines the educational value of student journalism,” the op-ed reads. “Interventions like this assault the core values of student newspapers — objectivity and comprehensive coverage. They compromise journalistic integrity and tarnish the development of the next generation of journalists.”

As the co-editors in chief of Indiana University Bloomington’s Indiana Daily Student wrote in an Oct. 21 letter from the editors: “Newsrooms don’t ‘vanish,’ They are gutted.” In October, the IDS faced a sudden and involuntary change by their university’s Media School, ending its print production for the spring semester and merging the entirety of its student media under one organization. The IDS chose to explore avenues to continue its print production in spite of this, the editors wrote in a letter published a week earlier.

By denying basic financial transparency and the opportunity to fundraise independently, the University has effectively stabbed a wound into our organization and is holding us back from stopping the bleeding. If the Daily Trojan was to end its daily print production, or worse, it didn’t just “vanish.” It was killed.

Before the start of the Spring 2025 semester, we ask that Student Life address our concerns in a manner that demonstrates a commitment to student journalism, to its students and to the Daily Trojan‘s 112-year legacy. 

From Student Life, we demand full financial transparency, as well as a say in controlling financial decisions related to our newspaper. We demand the ability to fundraise for ourselves, control where that money is stored and how it is used. 

Additionally, we respectfully urge our Undergraduate and Graduate Student Governments to consider proposing a $2 increase to the annual Student Programming Fee — a relatively small change which can more than double our budget for compensating writers and transform our stability as an organization.

The Daily Trojan has a legacy at USC, and we’re doing everything in our power to keep it alive. We implore the administration to do the same. 

Signed,

The Daily Trojan Fall 2024 Managing Team

Kimberly Aguirre

Fall 2024 Editor in Chief

Stefano Fendrich

Fall 2024 Managing Editor, Spring 2025 Editor in Chief

Nathan Elias

Fall 2024 Digital Managing Editor

Bianca B. Arzán-Montañez

Fall 2024 Associate Managing Editor

Alexa Avila Montaño

Fall 2024 Associate Managing Editor

Alia Yee Noll

Fall 2024 Associate Managing Editor