LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
We will never give up on this paper
We’re already making the DT stronger despite the uncertainties for this semester.
To put it simply, it’s been a rough month and a half for the Daily Trojan.
In our last edition of the Fall 2024 semester, the managing team demanded more financial autonomy for the student editors of the paper. In the following weeks, representatives from USC Student Life and Student Publications proceeded to tell us that due to an estimated budget deficit of $80,000 our print days were being cut from five days a week to three and the entirety of the money we pay our staffers as well as our senior editors — our masthead — would be cut for the Spring 2025 semester.
I had officially been the editor in chief for about two weeks when this all transpired. It wasn’t the start I had envisioned when I first wrote down all my goals in my platform for the semester. I had so many ideas for the future of this paper, but it felt like the University hit me with a sucker punch right to the gut.
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The Daily Trojan has been an integral part of USC since its creation in 1912 and has been printed five days a week since 1925. The DT was the last daily student paper on the West Coast, and now not only is that status gone, but our staffers won’t be paid a cent for their work.
We continued to have meetings up until the very end of the break with the decision makers of our fate. Still, it seemed like the University was merely listening instead of actively trying to help us remedy our situation.
The Daily Trojan contacted multiple student newspapers across the country to discuss revenue differences. (Henry Kofman / Daily Trojan)
It was demoralizing, to say the least. But this isn’t the first time the University has screwed us over and it definitely won’t be the last. This paper has survived for so many decades, through so many ups and downs, that there is no doubt in my mind this will not be the thing that leads to the end of the DT.
We haven’t been able to overturn the University’s decision on this semester’s budget. We were lucky enough to have received enough donations over the past year and a half to be able to pay our masthead this Spring. Thank you to anyone who donated even just $1 to us: It truly means the world.
We will continue to push back against the University about our financial situation — for transparency about the way our money is being used, for a seat at the table regarding DT budget decisions and for more freedom to fundraise money for our paper.
I think so many people automatically assume it makes sense for our newspaper not to make a profit because that’s “just the state of journalism these days.” To me, that’s a really naive way to look at our financial situation. Advertisers are still willing — to some degree — to pay for our ads in our paper because of the student audience we can reach. That’s a valuable commodity we have as a student paper that we must continue to leverage when we sell ads for our newspaper.
The managing team and I have talked to multiple student newspapers across the country. Many of these print papers are making significantly more advertising revenue than us. There is still a way to make money as a print student newspaper, but we need the University to allow us to implement our ideas to make revenue.
Adversity fosters creativity, and we’re taking that to heart this semester.
Printing will only take place three days a week, but the Daily Trojan staff plans on producing more content, online included, than a normal semester would. (Henry Kofman / Daily Trojan)
One of the main problems is that we aren’t generating enough advertising revenue. I want to devise a new long-term plan for how we can do that, whether that be simply picking up the phone and reaching out to more businesses nearby about whether they’d want to purchase an ad, or even expanding our ads to our website or social media.
However, the vision I want for this paper moving forward is to no longer rely solely on our ad revenue and University funding to keep us afloat. We want to set up tutoring for high school students — something that other student papers have tried and found lots of success with. Hosting a fundraising drive and making merch are just some of my ideas for helping our senior staff have more control over our finances.
Even though I want to start all of these initiatives tomorrow, I know that to be done properly, they will have to be longer-term goals we work toward throughout this semester. But in the short term, we can still do so many amazing things.
We may only be printing three days a week now, but we’ll still produce as much, if not more, content than we usually do in a semester. I can’t express enough how excited I am about the masthead and managing teams I have hired for this semester. They are a passionate and idea-driven group that will produce some of the best things I’ve ever seen at the DT.
Our online team is currently hard at work on the Daily Trojan app and is beta testing DT games. Our socials team will be as efficient as ever, expanding the number of people on the team and creating a more defined calendar for publishing dates. We’re putting even more emphasis on promoting and showcasing our amazing features, Spanish supplement and magazine sections. We’re reimagining our data section and revitalizing our Staff Development section to increase the quality of content we’re able to put out.
By no means is this semester going to be easy. Working at the DT frankly never is, and we’re dealing with more unknowns than we ever have heading into this semester. But if anything, these past few weeks have shown me just how much and how many people care about this paper. If there’s one thing I can promise for this semester and semesters onward, it’s that no matter what, we will continue to fight for the survival of the Daily Trojan.
