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The Silver & Gold Record, a newspaper for University of Colorado system faculty and staff, was informed Friday morning that the CU president's office was closing down the paper. The decision came, according to Silver & Gold staff, because of the ever-tightening budget.
Nancy Ciccone, chair of the Silver & Gold's editorial board and chair of the English department at UC-Denver, described the newspaper as "the only unbiased independent voice for the three campuses."
"It is also the liaison between legislature and the campuses," she said. "So in other words, for one campus to find out what another campus is doing-the Silver & Gold. What the [university] system is doing-the SSilver & Gold. What the legislature is doing-the Silver & Gold."
The decision caught the staff by surprise since as recently as April 20, the editorial board was asked to cut 25 percent of their roughly $600,000 budget to meet the smaller 2009-2010 budget. Staff members agreed to take a pay cut to meet that reduction. Though university administration asked the Silver & Gold not to report that cut, the staff, "decided that this was so important to them that they published an article between April 20 and May 1 that disclosed the amount of budget cuts that they were getting," Ciccone said. "And then the paper was canceled."
The decision to eliminate the 39-year-old paper was arrived at without consulting any of the editorial board members, or faculty and staff members in the university system.
"This is [the faculty's] newspaper. This isn't our newspaper," said Marianne Goodland, who reports on the UC-Denver campus, state legislature, and other state agencies for theSilver & Gold. "We were started by the faculty, and for Bruce Benson to make this decision without consulting the faculty is an absolute violation of the shared governance which he claims to be a believer in."
Goodland has worked for the Silver & Gold since 1998, after working for the University of Denver Office of Communications on the weekly faculty and staff publication at that university.
"This sends such a negative message on how the administration regards faculty and staff," Goodland said. "This is going to be a huge morale issue as well."
By the end of the day Friday, Goodland had received over 100 emails from faculty and staff members upset at the decision to close the Silver & Gold.
"The administration says that they're not in the newspaper business, and that's fine," Ciccone said, referring to a comment made by Leonard Dinegar, vice president for administration, when he made the announcement to the newspaper staff. "But they do have somewhat of a responsibility to be in the communication business," Ciccone continued. "So their ultimate response is to have electronic emails come out to the faculty."
Goodland argued that a publication that comes from the administration cannot draw the credibility that the Silver & Gold has maintained.
"They will have the administration's spin or a public relations spin on what happens at these meetings," said Goodland. "It will be only what the administration and the PR department want people to know about."
The Silver & Gold has, over the years, reported stories that have drawn criticism from the administration.
A statement released Friday afternoon announced, "While the Editorial Board of the Silver & Gold Record recognizes the financial challenges facing the University of Colorado, we profoundly oppose the decision to eliminate the paper because it is the only independent voice that speaks to all three universities about legislative, system, and campus issues in an unbiased fashion."
The final issue of the Silver & Gold Record will print May 14. All nine staff members will be on payroll, through June 30. The staff asked to continue publishing until June, but have been denied that request. So although the reporters will still be drawing salaries, they will be unable to report on events that include the May 18 and May 19 meeting of the Board of Regents to finalize the budget.
"I don't think they want people to know how the budget cuts are going to be handled," said Goodland.
Instead staff members will be "working from home," according to Ciccone. "On what," she said, "I don't know."
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