May 01, 2009 11:29 PM UTC

Another newspaper being shut down in Colorado

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• by: Awen

(More import here than meets the eye – promoted by Colorado Pols)

This time, it’s the Silver & Gold Record, the faculty/staff newspaper of CU.

With this, I’m outing myself. Probably no secret anyway.

We were notified this morning that the paper will cease publication with its May 14 edition, allegedly for budget reasons. The S&GR is the paper of record for the CU Board of Regents; “reporting” on their activities will now be done by the public relations people, or new ones that they will hire. That also goes for faculty and staff governance meetings.

The administration presented a budget scenario recently that said no major budget decisions would be done without consulting with the faculty. On this one, they did not – the faculty found out about it when we did. So much for CU’s “principles.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the S&GR, it is the editorially independent newspaper at the University. I have covered the state capitol since the 1998 session, along with the downtown campus and several state agencies that impact higher ed.

Over the years, the administration has at various times tried to shut us down because of what we write –  Albino tried it, Hank Brown tried to take over the editorial content of the paper just two years ago. I do not believe that the budget is the primary reason that the paper is being shut down – given that out of 14 classified employees being laid off today (28 total personnel and 55 positions), 9 of them are at the S&GR. (This is out of the system administration/president’s office, not the entire university).

And there may be a violation of federal rules regarding use of federal stimulus dollars – but I’ll save that for another day.

Marianne Goodland