The End of The Daily Universe: A Less Emotional Response

Late last night, I posted a response to the 'changes' the DU decided to make recently. I say "changes" like that because some are telling me, "The DU is not ending, it's just changing form." In that sense, they're correct. Well, your great aunt Kathy didn't die, she just changed form. And your hard drive didn't crash, it just changed form into a deeper, darker crisp black. Ok, I think it's safe to say "The DU as we know it, is dead." If I say it like that, it sounds much more favorable, right?

If you read my earlier post, you undoubtedly picked up on my emotional charges about the whole situation. Today, I wish to tackle the situation in a more logical manner. Losing eight employees is hardly a matter to ignore, but in this post I hope to disconnect from my personal relationships with those losing their jobs to address other issues.

My first concern about the DU changing form is for the journalism department as a whole. Perhaps the faculty spent too much time teaching us about being idealistic, and not enough on being realistic. After all, in the past, if you wanted to be a real journalist, it took some idealistic values. But what was most stunning to me is the lack of idealistic virtue the journalism faculty held when making this decision.

Now, i wasn't in those meetings when they decided to discontinue the daily part of the daily universe, so I'm not sure what exactly was said. But as mentioned in my previous post, I assume the main reasons for discontinuing The Daily Universe (as we know it!) was because of financial pressures. The DU was costing a lot of money to produce. Other Communications faculty were critical of this. They probably spouted, "Newspapers are dying!" like they are want to do. And so, after much deliberation, over a span of a number of months, journalism professors thought, "Yeah, you're right. They are dying. Here, we'll be hospitable and save the department so much money and change our curriculum. Then you'll be happy, right?" They called it a business decision.

Well, in the real world, newspapers are dying. And logically, it would make sense to change the curriculum to be up-to-date with the world. But in doing so, I worry that the journalism faculty sacrificed far too much, gave up too much ground. If they are to be completely realistic in this world, we must admit that leverage and negotiating power is a chief function of business transactions.

We need only to look at the professional staff of the DU for example, who lost their leverage and negotiating power when they agreed to use "new technology models" and trained students how to use these models to compile a newspaper. For after all, once the students knew how to use a system themselves, the value of the professionals of the old guard had diminished drastically, along with their leverage. They, as we know, soon found themselves without a job.

And that's why I believe the journalism professors relinquished too much, in this instance. If you're going to make budget concessions, you don't start with the "award-winning," hallmark creation of the journalism department. Now what are the professors left with to boast? "We have a really good blog" is just not going to cut it. You can't win real awards for having a blog. In a metaphorical sense, the journalism faculty has handed over the keys to the company car, prime parking space included. What else do they have to negotiate with?

In a few years, when the administration comes down and says, "We need to make some faculty cuts," they'll start with what they believe to be the least important assets. Right now, communications faculty is boasting about how THEY made the decisions to cut the DU (as we know it!), not the administration. If I'm the administration, and I see that the dept. of Communications doesn't even care about journalism anymore, then the first faculty to be cut are the most also expendable--Journalism Professors.

In the not-too-far-off future, it will be deducted that journalism itself is no longer a viable professional field. Journalism faculty will find themselves in a position to argue this against this sentiment. But when they do, they will no longer have a real, physical product that continues to net substantial student readership. They will no longer be able to hang their hat on the number of awards the newspaper has won. They won't even have a newspaper. And certainly, they will have lost their ability to effectively negotiate because they lack sufficient leverage. In time, the journalism emphasis will be non-existent.

And with that, I ask of them: where will THIS leave your students? Employers will deduce that I now hold a degree that lacks value, even to the school that granted me the degree. They won't care if my degree says "Print Journalism" or "Multimedia Journalism," as both will be extinct. If the goal is to change curriculum to match today's standards in order to better prepare students, perhaps the best way to go about it is to continue to produce physical proof that a demand exists! How easy will it be for administration to shut down a website when the time comes? No one will miss the universe.byu.edu URL amongst millions of other URL's. No one will say, "Wait, how else will I get BYU news now that the Universe website has been shut down?"

BYU Sports information has their own website. The dept of communications has their own website. BYU clubs have their own website. Administration has its own website. EVERYONE has a website that I can get information from. The unique thing about the Daily Universe was that NO ONE had their own newspaper, except us. No one had something physical to show for their efforts. And now, the journalism department becomes just another URL to forget.

And besides all of that, I believe students really valued the Daily Universe (as we knew it!). Months ago, many lobbied on Washington to eliminate NPR. It wasn't needful anymore, they said. It takes money from the overall federal budget, they complained. But what is the REAL value of NPR? It is not measured in monetary, percentage-of-the-budget, terms. The value of NPR has always been in the product it produces--a product that listeners and customers really enjoy. Undoubtedly, NPR has had to make decisions based upon budget, but to hand over the radio station and change to web-only seems ludicrous.

A few years back, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a daily newspaper, chose to run as a web-only news source. I can't tell you their numbers, but I can tell you that no one I know (being from Seattle, myself) asks me, "Did you hear about that story in the Seattle P-I?" I'm left to conclude that not that many people read the PI. It's a one paper town now, with the Seattle Times taking the reigns. And if you were to tell me today that seattlePI.com is shutting down, I suppose most of us here in Seattle couldn't care less.

It's the same thing with the DU. With the effective destruction of the DU (as we know it!), it seems viable that the journalism department has sacrificed its greatest bargaining chip. And for what? To try to talk current and prospective students into believing that they'll be better off if we turn to a web-based training model? They could have easily done that without tearing down the DU.

My whole point here is, I think journalism professors should take a look in the mirror and find out what they just gave up. They lost all future leverage, because no one's going to buy that online journalism is any different than the CHUM major, computers in the Humanities. Or any different than computer science, or graphic design.

But mostly, they're losing a great daily product. A product that continues to have readership, drive discussion, and entertain readers. And that's a sad day for the department and the students in it. Some will continue to say, "we shouldn't have curriculum if it doesn't match up with prospective career opportunities." And then I will kindly point across the path to the JSB building, where religion classes are primarily held for proof that, when you have a good thing going, you should try to keep it, regardless of how it's going to prepare me for a career.