M&M Course Tours UGA Campus Newspaper

Article by Kelly Rosch, Loden Cullar-Ledford, and Rose Fox/Photos by Dan Weitzman, Gunner Strietzel and Ellie Solomon
M&M Staffers

It was a warm, breezy summer Thursday morning outside the Red & Black’s Baxter Street offices in Athens, Ga. Stepping out of their vans, Duke TIP Media and Message students were met with an imperial brick building as they arrived at the University of Georgia’s collegiate newspaper for a tour.The austere exterior didn’t match the interior at all – quickly they were met by Publisher Harry Montevideo, who bounds down the stairs to greet them in the lobby after a short pause with the receptionist.

Montevideo is a stout man, rising about 6 feet from the floor, his smile as big as his blue and white striped shirt. Montevideo discussed various facts regarding the 116 year-old newspaper, the $2 million building; and answered questions from the aspiring young journalists about the history of the Red & Black.

Founded in 1893, the Red & Black college newspaper is run and edited by University of Georgia students in the historic town of Athens, Ga. Athens is the home to a population of nearly 100,000, with college students making up 40 percent of that number.Montevideo, resident publisher of the Red & Black, gave visiting the high-school students a run-down of the effort put into running and publishing a daily newspaper.

“There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work,” Montevideo said, talking about weekly staff meetings, last minute edits, and late-night finishing touches.The paper, now an independent non-profit organization, separated from the college in 1980 when they published coverage of an administrative scandal. According to Montevideo, UGA’s President didn’t want the stories to run, but couldn’t restrict the newspaper’s coverage. The President decided to stop funding the Red & Black when he discovered this, and after five or six years, Montevideo said, the Red & Black had successfully made the transition from a school newspaper to a fully autonomous newspaper.

Montevideo led the 18 Duke TIP students in the Media and Message course through a small door to the left of the receptionist’s desk into a medium sized office, where there were cubicles, fax machines; telephones; computers and office supplies. Natalie Mitchell, the ad director at the Red & Black; described her job, and those of the few people working under her who sell ad space to provide income for the non-profit student-run paper.

A non-profit organization, the Red & Black relies primarily on ad revenue. With ads running at costs of up to $5,000, the Red & Black’s advertising department creates a massive proportion of the paper’s $1 million annual budget. Unfortunately, ad revenue has decreased 20 percent due to the poor economy.

Although ads are important to the paper, readers will “never see an ad” on the paper’s opinion page, which Montevideo described as “vibrant” and “the heart and soul of the newspaper.”Similarly, ads are not shown on the Red & Black’s front page, although Montevideo admitted that they “might consider front page ads down the road.”

Being the ninth-largest newspaper in the state of Georgia, ad revenue pays the salaries for roughly 100 UGA students to work for the Red & Black. Montevideo is proud of the program, saying it provides a great educational experience for the students involved. The students often wind up with jobs in journalism, especially advertising.

Montevideo’s animated hands express as much as his words as he tells of an old story printed in the Red & Black, where a local church group dressed up as pirates and ninjas. A police officer mistakenly apprehended a ninja who ran down the sidewalk, simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a bystander happened to take a picture with their cell phone, which ended up on the Tonight Show.

Montevideo led the TIP group from the advertising department to the next room, slightly smaller than its predecessor, in the back corner is a door leading to a dark room full of dusty old computers, a neat stack of the decrepit machines sits outside the door. A large table dominates the center of the room, covered in ink stains and old newspapers.

Montevideo explains how the Red& Black, lacking a printer, sends all of the finished editions of the daily paper downtown to the Athens Banner-Herald building, which prints and ships more than 16,000 Red & Blacks a day to more than 40,000 students, faculty; and staff. His explanation of how 16,000 newspapers are read by 40,000 people is simple: for the most part, when someone is done reading their paper, they just leave it wherever they are, on benches; in classrooms and so forth.
Printing 16,000 copies each day, the Red & Black thrives on a “pass along” readership. Many students will leave free copies of the paper lying in classes or dorm rooms, encouraging new readers and increasing readership.

One of the top five collegiate newspapers in the nation, the Red & Black is three times the size of some city newspapers.
The class exits the room back into the lobby, and continues up a flight of stairs to the 2nd floor, and into a large room full of cubicles. This is the newsroom.

Ed Morales, the Editorial Advisor for the Red & Black, joins the tour. He has an earring in one ear and talks with the TIP students as they snoop around the desks, upstairs in the newsroom. The air conditioner whirs in the background, its breeze rustling papers on desks.Itching to ask questions, the TIP gaggle heads into the conference room and assembles around the long conference table. Harry Montevideo hooks his glasses on the collar of his blue polo shirt, leans on a small table, and prepares himself for the onslaught of questions.

The TIP students shower Montevideo and Morales with questions, and are rewarded with just as many answers.

Through the recession, the Red & Black had a 20 percent decrease in ad revenue, Montevideo tells the students, but the paper has recuperated a quarter of those losses in the past year.The newspaper’s Web site has helped with this, since up to 10,000 people read it online. Montevideo says he still prefers to read it in print, personally, and has a stash of archived copies dating back to the 80s.

Morales has an extensive background in college papers and seems to be unmatched in his dedication. After the tragedy of September 11, Morales worked 36 hours straight. He likes to see the same level of interest in the students who work for the Red & Black, but it takes a lot of courage to be so involved in a publication while still being a college student.This is quite a feat for Montevideo and Morales as well.

When asked about any difficulties they have with running the Red & Black, the Publisher replied, “It’s hard selling ads,” simultaneously as the Editorial Advisor said, “Getting it out every day.”They are both confident that their newspaper – as well as others’ -- will continue to thrive. “A lot of people are predicting the demise of the newspaper, and I don’t see that happening,” Montevideo said. “There’s always going to be a need for information.”

Morales thinks newspapers will even survive competition with television.
“Television media and newspapers are two completely different things. There would be no television news if there were no newspapers.”Newspapers also cover gutsy things, and often television broadcasts report on them only after newspapers do. “These are things nobody wants to be found out,” Morales says, “and without newspapers, they wouldn’t be found out.”

Although Montevideo, a Florida college graduate, describes working for the Red & Black as a “pretty demanding job,” he does not mind the long hours and painstaking deadlines of the paper. For all of the difficulties, Montevideo is dedicated to his work of informing the people of Athens, saying, “if it happened on campus, if it’s news on campus, you’re going to see it in the Red & Black.”

Red & Black reporters listen on police scanners, use the campus UGA Alert, and rely on student sources to stay up-to-date and accurate on breaking news.

When asked about the issues newspapers faced with the economy, Montevideo seemed hopeful for the future of his medium.“Society is going to move back to the point where they start caring,” he said, citing the Watergate scandal as an era where newspapers were “at their peaks.”Success is rampant in all aspects of the Red & Black.

Staff writers interview movie stars and governors, cover presidential and senatorial campaigns, and “excel in their first job” as a result of their work with the college newspaper.