Cerritos College newspaper gets slashed

Cerritos College in Norwalk, Calif., won’t have much of a paper trail next year as its campus newspaper, the Talon Marks, will not be in stands.

The dean of fine arts and communications along with the vice president of instruction at Cerritos decided to cut Talon Marks, the college paper,  down to one issue per semester starting in the fall. The rest of the paper’s usually-weekly content would run online.

“We are fortunate in that we have a strong online edition to work with and we have been working for some time to put more emphasis on online journalism,” said Rich Cameron, one of the Talon Marks advisers.

“Still, it will be a daunting challenge to play the cards that have been dealt.”
According to Cameron, the college has to eliminate $14 million from the usual $100 million budget for the next fiscal year.

The college plans to maintain the budget by eliminating class sections with consistently low enrollment.

One of the classes that will be unavailable in the fall is Newspaper Production (Journalism 105), the class that produces the print edition of the Talon Marks.

“The decision to cut the production class of our newspaper is no surprise to me,” said Rick Gomez, next semester’s editor in chief. “With budget cuts being a major issue, I understand why they would cut a class that fills roughly 10 students a semester.”

The decision was made May 21 due to the fact that the class enrollment has traditionally fallen below the 15-person minimum set by the curriculum committee at Cerritos.

“The foremost issue is that the college is having to make tough decisions and has made an unwise decision to embrace the idiotic notion that ‘education begins with 20 students,’ ” Cameron said.

Scott Watkins, the current editor in chief, gave a presentation at the college’s board of trustees meeting May 20 at Cerritos. Five of seven board members stated they would hate to see the printed edition disappear.

Board President Bob Epple and Vice President Dr. Bob Hughlett could not be reached for comment.

“Not having newspapers on campuses is unacceptable,” said newly elected Los Angeles Community College District board of trustee member Tina Park.

The paper can only use student government money to fund the print edition. In other words, the Talon Marks cannot sell advertisements in order to fund a monthly or weekly paper.

“The bulk of the costs for paying for a print edition have been borne by the student government, who just a week ago or so approved a budget that would support a print edition on par with the past 12-plus years,” Cameron said.

Cerritos, a school with a Fall 2008 enrollment of 26,835, could possibly be the first college to eliminate print newspapers entirely, according to Cameron.

“This could be the beginning of the end of a journalism program at Cerritos,” Cameron said.

There were efforts to come up with solutions to avoid the current situation, but Gomez says they were all “shot down.”

“Because I was the editor in chief during Spring ’09, it feels like in some ways it’s my fault and I have been thinking over the past few days what I could have done differently or (whether) there was more I could have done,” Watkins said.

While the Talon Marks’ staff has been working for some time to put more emphasis on its online edition, they are still apprehensive about relying on it completely.

Cameron stressed the Talon Marks Web site should be the default page on all campus computers in order to boost visibility, but that effort was not approved.

If the situation remains the same in the fall, Gomez says he and his staff would have to move forward and make the best out of it.

Cameron believes overturning the decision would be difficult, but hopes in “tough times you have leaders who will show courage and be willing to say, ‘We made a mistake and we’re willing to undo it before we do too much damage.’ ”

“If you see the paper as a public/student service, it should not be (cut), because especially with the craziness of the budget cuts around the state, there needs to be someone informing students of what cuts are taking place on their campus,” Watkins said.

“There is no other news organization in the world that covers Cerritos College as well as the Talon Marks and that can go for any college paper covering its campus.”