I've saved this discussion for last, because I think it perhaps the most important of all of my concerns. The suggestions I outlined yesterday are relatively common sense, and I know there are people Daily who also share my principals, since for periods in the past many of my suggestions have been followed at that newspaper. I also realize that by virtue of the Daily's somewhat unique position as the "official" student newspaper, it possesses an incredible institutional inertia. Perhaps some day students will create another newspaper to seriously challenge its dominance, but I think much more likely the Daily will remain, and will change, as it always has, to reflect the skills and interests of the students who make the paper their own. Hopefully my short time there and this critique will play a role, however small, in that history. That being said, I turn to the issue at hand: the independence of the Michigan Daily.

    Writes former University of Michigan president Robben Fleming of the turbulent 1960s in his memoir "Tempests into Rainbows." Fleming writes that advertisers approached the administration asking for another paper, but, not wanting to kill the Daily outright the administration decided to begin publishing the University Record on Mondays, the only day the Daily did not print in those days. Fleming concludes that the affair was successful - the Daily's language "improved" and the Record became a "respected source of information."

    However dubious this little tidbit of revisionist history may sound to the contemporary reader, Fleming is ultimately technically correct about the administration's ability to cease publication of the Daily, at any time. Administered under Regents Bylaws Chapter 8, Section 13.11, the Daily is run by the Board for Student Publications, formerly the Board In Control of Student Publications. Here's an excerpt from that section of the Bylaws:

[…]

The Board for Student Publications shall have full authority with respect to the assets, budget, financial, and legal affairs of the corporation. The board shall also have the authority to consider its scope and to increase or decrease the number of publications over which it has authority. In all other matters, including editorial control, the board shall act in an advisory capacity. The Daily staff shall consult with the board with respect to the appointment of the senior editors. The details of the consultation shall be devised jointly by the Daily and the board to the mutual satisfaction of both."

    All that separates the Daily from total editorial control is that one line: "In all other matters, including editorial control, the board shall act in an advisory capacity," which can be changed with a simple vote of the Regents. Also, the president appoints all nine members of the Board. While overt editorial control seems unlikely, the Record has succeeded in taking many readers from the faculty and staff from the Michigan Daily. In the 1960s, University employees were often instrumental in putting teeth into student demands - faculty organized the first ever teach-in in 1965 on Vietnam, and University service employees joined thousands of students in sympathy of striking black students during the Black Action Movement.

    In the past year, the University Record began to accept advertising (and thus, it seems, expand in size). By quietly growing the Record, the University further marginalizes a newspaper stuck in internal organizational malaise by robbing them from the readership of students' most powerful allies - faculty and staff.

    Should the daily seek total administrative independence from the University? I don't know, since there clearly are benefits to being an arm of Fleming: the ability to use the University's investment office to invest their surplus funds, and their cheap telephone and internet resources that enable the Daily to save money. There have, however, been instances in the past where the administration-appointed Board has exercised their right to nix certain editors through their consultation powers, and I don't know any reason why they wouldn't do that in the future.

    At the very least, the Daily should report and publicize the meetings of the Board for Student Publications, since their actions impact not only the Daily but also the Michigensian and what's left of the Gargoyle. I'll let the reader judge whether most Daily staff members, or students for that matter, know the power wielded by the Board for Student Publications.