In wake of "cartoon controversy," UPEI student newspaper struggles to prevent takeover | NowPublic News Coverage

In wake of "cartoon controversy," UPEI student newspaper struggles to prevent takeover

by dontaxe | March 23, 2007 at 12:18 pm

3617 views | 14 Recommendations | 7 comments

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, "staff at the Cadre, the UPEI student newspaper, are fighting a plan to be taken over by a campus group, the Independent Student Media Society." The story, dated March 22, 2007 is available here.

The plan involves cutting the number of staff at the Cadre from twelve to six, and reducing frequency of publication from twice a month to once a month. Cadre Editor Rob Walker remarks, "They're going to essentially just take the Cadre name and the money."

In January 2007, the CBC reported that the UPEI student newspaper wanted to end its relationship with the student union. Editor Rob Walker said the newspaper required more independence. He referred to the "cartoon censorship" in the spring of 2006, when the newspaper attempted to publish the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The UPEI Administration and the UPEI Student Union acted together, first to prevent distribution of the Cadre on campus, and then to seize the entire print run of the issue.

For the CBC story dated January 29, 2007, go to: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2007/01/29/cadre-break.html

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Rob Walker

at 13:10 on March 23rd, 2007

For the record, the staff at The Cadre were never informed of the student union's attempt to separate the paper from the SU. The chair of the committee who are looking over the proposal has been quoted numerous times as saying he was sleeping during the meetings. Under the proposed plan, no one would be re-hired from our staff of 12 people and the paper would be changed into a monthly magazine.

Not only that, but the su's main concern is being held liable for any legal action taken against the paper, with no say as to the content of the paper...however, the group that would take over the paper is a student society, and therefore falls under the control of the student union. This still leaves them liable in any legal issue.

Rob Walker

Editor in Chief

The Cadre

Actual News Geezer

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 14:10 on March 23rd, 2007

dontaxe has posting an intriguing item with a sharp, prompt response by the editor of the UPEI student newspaper.

ANG

Rob Walker

at 11:02 on March 24th, 2007

Ryan Palmer of the Independent Student Media society has posted the
proposal and some interesting comments on the community blog page,
located here:

http://weblogs.upei.ca/node/4819

The proposal can be found here:

http://weblogs.upei.ca/files/Cadre%20and%20ISM%202007-2008.pdf

"As for current Cadre staff, ISM can make no guarantees that current
Cadre staff or positions will carry over to the new Cadre. As outlined
in the proposal, people with specific skills (not just print, although
one important aspect) will be needed to pull this transformation off.
I'm sorry, we can't afford to marry ourselves to existing staff and
positions who have the very specific goal of delivering the print
edition alone. We need people with well-rounded skills in terms to get
the job done," said Palmer.

dontaxe

at 08:28 on March 27th, 2007

UPDATE: On March 27, the CBC reported that the UPEI student union has rejected a proposal to hand
responsibility of the student newspaper over to a campus group, saying
it wants a new committee to look at the issue.

The new committee, to be formed this summer, will include an editor
and reporter from the Cadre as well as a member of the print journalism
community.

The first committee to look at the proposal from Independent Student
Media did not include significant input from the Cadre, Walker said.
ISM, which currently runs the campus radio station, was proposing to
cut the Cadre's publication frequency and staff in half.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2007/03/27/cadre-independence.html