In their final edition of the semester, the Daily Trojan said USC is cutting the publication’s budget and warned the university community would suffer without the paper’s print edition and better staff compensation.
“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,” said the newspaper’s managing team in a statement released earlier Thursday.
Representatives for Daily Trojan said the university told them over the summer that the paper might not be able to print the newspaper daily for the first time since its start in 1912. They were only informed of their printing schedule nine days before their first issue in August, and now they’re facing the same situation ahead of the spring semester.
“I think it would be something that would be missed, genuinely,” said Alexa Avilla Montaño, one of the associate managing editors of the Daily Trojan. “So many people know the publication, it would be noticeable if we weren’t printing daily.”
The paper currently comes out 5 days per week when USC is in session, with a circulation of 5,000 daily. During the summer session, the paper is printed once a week for a six week period.
The leaders of the paper said they have “ideas to fundraise” including selling merchandise and hosting journalism workshops.
“We are writing this because we want to help,” they said. “We want to be active participants in the conversation and work toward solutions, but we cannot do this without financial transparency from the University.”
The Daily Trojan stated that although students have editorial control over the publication, they have zero control over the finances. The paper’s leaders said in the letter that they had “never seen the Daily Trojan’s budget.” Avilla Montaño said the university has maintained a pattern of being vague when it comes to financial transparency.
“They don’t tell us things that are necessary for us to continue being a publication,” Avilla Montaño said.
In a statement to Annenberg Media sent two hours after this story was published, USC Student Life said they are “deeply committed to the value and role of student media.”
“Student Life has scheduled a meeting next week with the DT management team to collaborate on the best ways to ensure the newspaper meets its budget and sets up the Daily Trojan for long-term financial success in this rapidly changing media environment,” Student Life said in the statement.
On Thursday, professors from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism began drafting a letter to the university protesting the cuts and in support of the Daily Trojan’s efforts.
According to Tomás Mier, a 2020 graduate, former editor-in-chief of the Daily Trojan in 2019 and a current reporter for Rolling Stone, budgeting was a consistent issue affecting the publication.
“We were making mere pennies for the work that we were doing every week,” he said. “We did it because we loved it, and because we wanted to keep the university informed and hold the administration accountable.”
The recent budget cuts have prevented the newspaper from compensating its staff fairly and expanding as a publication, leaders said.
The Daily Trojan said it wished that the university took inspiration from The Stanford Daily, whose staff has earned minimum wage since 1973. On the other hand, Daily Trojan writers are paid $15 for articles that they take days, if not weeks, to write.
“That shows that Stanford values independent student journalism, and meanwhile, we’re making less than $5 an hour,” Mier said.
“Editors typically work over 20 hours weekly and receive small “appreciation honorariums,” which amount to about two dollars per hour,” the letter said. “Yet we are barred from referring to our positions as employment or describing our pay as wages.”
By contrast, Annenberg Media, the news outlet overseen and funded by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, pays dozens of student workers to be editors and producers at the Los Angeles minimum wage, $17.27.
For Avilla Montaño, the hardest part about the budget cuts has been not being able to compensate the more than 300 staff members that contribute to the Daily Trojan.
“We don’t get to pay our staff as much as we’d like, considering how much time and effort and love they put into everything that they do,” she said. “The biggest slap in the face is the fact that we can’t give them the money that they deserve.”
This is not the first time the university has limited the publication’s resources. In spring 2023, the university informed the newsroom it would have to relocate to a smaller space in the student center the following fall, after having published from its previous headquarters for more than 60 years.
Now, the Daily Trojan’s office operates out of a room that is 40% smaller. As a result, the Daily Bruin, the student-run newspaper at UCLA, published a statement in solidarity with the USC publication.
“The Board believes that USC, a private university with the second-largest endowment in California, has far more than enough resources to guarantee adequate space for every student group on campus,” the Daily Bruin Editorial Board wrote on May 7, 2023. “It’s a question of whether USC believes that independent student journalism is worthwhile and should have space to continue.”
Avilla Montaño said it was touching to know that the rival school had their back.
“I know that a lot of people think that print media is not valuable, which I genuinely do not think is true,” she said. “I feel like it makes us more accessible to the public and to our community.”
Mier said the budget cuts mirror the trends of the news industry at large.
“We’re seeing so many newspapers being bought out by big corporations, and sometimes reducing their staffing and the work that they’re doing,” Mier said.
Now, as a professional journalist and alum of the Daily Trojan, seeing the issues becoming more and more exacerbated has been frustrating for Mier.
“It makes it clear that the university doesn’t value student journalism,” he said. “The university is not providing adequate funds to have a well-run newspaper.”
Another former Daily Trojan editor and current Los Angeles Times editor, Steven Padilla, said he was dismayed to learn about the situation.
“If the print edition is cut back in some way, that is indeed just a shame,” Padilla said. “For the readers, yes online is terrific but there’s something about just holding a newspaper in your hand that is just a satisfying experience.”
The Daily Trojan has demanded that Student Life give the publication full financial transparency, control over financial decisions related to the newspaper and the ability to fundraise and decide how money is stored and 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,” they said. During the fall 2023 semester, the paper began requesting donations at the bottom of their digital articles as a fundraising effort.
For more than 100 years, the Daily Trojan has been an instrumental part of USC culture and tradition, a legacy that is currently under threat.
“If it weren’t for the DT, I would not be where I am,” Mier said. “I know that a lot of our amazing journalists that come out of USC credit the Daily Trojan for being the kickstarter to their careers. It would be so, so sad to see the newspaper fall apart because the university doesn’t want to support them.”
The Daily Trojan has been a resource for students when it came to major campus news, including the Varsity Blues Scandal and the pro Palestinian protests that occurred on campus last spring. Mier worries that without the Daily Trojan, it will become harder and harder to keep the USC administration responsible.
“Reducing the amount of times the paper is printed continues to dwindle the amount of coverage that will happen,” Mier said. “It’ll make it more difficult to hold the administration accountable for its action and inaction.”
This story has been updated to include a statement by USC Student Life sent two hours after this story was initially published.