Visit to Red & Black

Harry Montevideo (right); Ed Morales (below)

All Photos by Joy Hong

The Media and Message class today visited the offices of The Red & Black, the independent student newspaper of the University of Georgia. We toured their facilities and spoke with Publisher Harry Montevideo and Editorial Adviser Ed Morales (pictured above).
One of the students in the course will post an article about our visit later but for now here's audio from the meeting. Enjoy!
Thanks Harry and Ed for your hospitality. We enjoyed our visit!

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Update. 6/24/2009. Here's an article by Miles Wilson/Photos by Joy Hong

On Tuesday, June 23, the students in the Media and Message class visited the local campus newspaper, the Red and Black, for a tour.

“I thought that it would be really cool to see what [The Red and Black] was like,” said Kelly Castro, 16, from Miami, Fla., one of the students that went on the field trip. "It was nice to see what it looked like and I thought it was really cool how open they were to having new students join and how they help them learn and have the experience."

The Publisher, Harry Montevideo, had generously accepted the request for a field trip and even gave the tour himself. Along the way, he talked about how the staff is almost entirely made up of students that go to the University of Georgia, with a few professionals mixed in, including himself and the editorial advisor, Ed Morales. Montevideo and Morales took the students into the conference room, and talked about anything the students threw their way.

They talked about how they were unique from other college papers, in which they explained that their paper was not dependent on UGA. The paper does not get funds from UGA, and therefore, staffers can write about anything that any other paper could write about without having to worry about UGA threatening to cut its funding.

One of the students asked how many people were on the staff, and how much they get paid. Counting the professionals, there are a total of about 125 people. But how much everyone got paid was a different story. Some reporters get paid about $10 per story, and people like the editors get around $250 a week, depending on the position they are in. The advertising sales representatives get about 10 percent-13 percent of the income that the newspaper gets from advertisements.

The newspaper receives comments a lot on the Web, but not all of them are good. Some people don’t like the views that the Red and Black prints in its papers, and some people come to complain in person. For example, when Montevideo was asked about his most interesting story, he said that one day, back in the 80s, a middle-aged woman came in and started yelling at the editor. Apparently, they had given a bad review of R.E.M’s new album. The woman was band leader Michael Stipe’s mother. But most of their comments and posts have been positive.

“We’ve actually gotten quite a few tips from comments,” said Morales.

The trip was a great experience for all of the students, and they all learned a lot.

“I thought that it was [interesting],” said AnnaMarie Koehler-Shepley, 14, from Tampa, Fla. “It was really hands on."