http://i.imgur.com/m4UUqNU.png



I think it would be in the best interest for all involved (20 thousand students or so) to simply end this charade

This has been an interesting discussion. While I don't believe that 'no-one read the Sil' I think there is merit in the criticism that it isn't really a student newspaper as we are not developing journalism, it is opinion pieces and some hipster garbage.

Why doesn't the Sil look into real issues on campus that are costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. MOSAIC has a been a nightmare and some business profs have the cost (including time wasted by staff and students) at over $60 million. The Learning Portfolio has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (likely much more) and not only isn't it used, it is actively disliked by students and faculty. Sure there are some numbers but if you force the kids in first year Psych to do anything you can artificially inflate numbers. The Faculty of Science has been on a hiring freeze for two years because of the new budget model. Last year the Sil (at the behest of students) profiled Dr. David Brock and then never followed up. Sure he won the MSU teaching award, great. What is his current status as a Faculty member? Is he tenure track? Is he on a contract? We all hope it it the latter but why don't we know.

I would just like the Sil to remember that opinion isn't journalism. Maybe the could engage our completely disengaged student body if they brought these issues to everyone attention.

I like this direction in the last few posts! I really do hope it turns into a coherent action in response to the Sil to improve it. An especially big thanks to tigercatfan for identifying some great issues that The Sil has been less than effective on reporting.

I think it would be in the best interest for all involved (20 thousand students or so) to simply end this charade

What is the best way to do a petition and push it into masses?

Also, what the heck is "Benefits" in that table?

I just find The Sil fascinating. The University is going through a bureaucratic nightmare of wasted money and misdirected spending that directly effects the student experience but no-one seems to know about it.

Another good thing to explore. Why does MUFA limit the number of Teaching Profs but allow Sessionals? There are so many important questions to explore as a journalist.

I think you're all close to addressing the right thing. If you look at the budget, Advertising Sales almost completely cover the Printing Expense, which is reasonable enough. Going to online only just can't provide anywhere close to the same ad revenue — especially if you put weight into that Alexa ranking, though Alexa tends to be quite flawed. Unless you really believe "gandhi silhouette" would make up 36.09% of search traffic.

Eventually head to online once the money stops coming in, but people have to be picking it up since they can probably track numbers. I doubt that they don't count the papers left over once the new issue goes up. Advertisers keep pumping money, so it's probably doing well enough.

The laptop thing was probably for MSU meetings and debate livestreams where you'd need a dedicated computer. Don't really know what AVTEK is doing in the meantime.

Stop sweating the smaller stuff and focus on the other big expense of wages. How much does each person make (you can probably find this out once they put new jobs up on the MSU site)? How much could you cut out of current positions? How many positions can you cut?

If you want to give a few more pages to news to focus on the questions asked, what do you cut? As much as opinions has gotten slack on here, you can't really cut it since, you know, Buzzfeed is one of the few examples of a kind of news place actually growing these days and people love junk. Sports is alright since Daily News doesn't report on it at all it seems. So I'd just cut stuff from lifestyle and "ANDY". Idk how that would affect people wanting to place ads in those sections though.

Idk what that Depreciation Expense is about either. I would like to think the MSU knows what they're doing though, and I'd assume next year's budget comes out soon-ish.

{happy tears} Someone who can be critical of The Sil, who is clearly involved somehow. Just look how much the tone of the criticism / discussion changed from derogatory statements and assumptions, to valid discussion with actual insight.

Originally Posted by mike_302

{happy tears} Someone who can be critical of The Sil, who is clearly involved somehow. Just look how much the tone of the criticism / discussion changed from derogatory statements and assumptions, to valid discussion with actual insight.

Because you obviously brought so much to the conversation.

Stop hijacking my thread.

Originally Posted by GeorgeLucas

Stop hijacking my thread.

Your posts were absolutely trash, and the only reason this has any good traction is because of other people. You're a terrible troll, and there's no reason why anyone should respect your opinions or thoughts.

Originally Posted by mike_302

who is clearly involved somehow

I wouldn't assume too much about if/how I'm involved as it isn't actually relevant.

I can confidently say, however, that the important parts of what has been discussed was already clear to higher-ups before the thread was made. The whole "abolishing the whole damn thing" line of thought just won't happen, and it is actually pretty well-respected by other schools, papers, and active professional journalists (for some aspects). It has a good base to work with. You don't have stuff like this on the books for no reason and no plan for the future.

This is gonna be my last post on here as that is all that needs to be said. If you really don't trust the MSU's process or judgement or general budget, then you need to get off of MacInsiders and go talk to someone. Even Yik Yak is held in higher regard to MacInsiders because at least there are enough comments/people for something to shine through the more often.

Originally Posted by Test

Your posts were absolutely trash, and the only reason this has any good traction is because of other people. You're a terrible troll, and there's no reason why anyone should respect your opinions or thoughts.


I wouldn't assume too much about if/how I'm involved as it isn't actually relevant.

I can confidently say, however, that the important parts of what has been discussed was already clear to higher-ups before the thread was made. The whole "abolishing the whole damn thing" line of thought just won't happen, and it is actually pretty well-respected by other schools, papers, and active professional journalists (for some aspects). It has a good base to work with. You don't have stuff like this on the books for no reason and no plan for the future.

This is gonna be my last post on here as that is all that needs to be said. If you really don't trust the MSU's process or judgement or general budget, then you need to get off of MacInsiders and go talk to someone. Even Yik Yak is held in higher regard to MacInsiders because at least there are enough comments/people for something to shine through the more often.

Haha, Mike you forgot to change the account.

I can't believe you would make an account just to try to hurt my feelings again.

FYI. Macinsiders might be small, but it's still 2 million points above in Alexa rating than The Sil, and I bet Chad doesn't even get 183k+ every year.

@GeorgeLucas I definitely don't get 183k a year from MacInsiders haha (I wish!), if I did I would quite my job! If I had a sales team like The Sil, their marketing budget, and the full-time staff they have, it could probably be quite profitable. Right now the ads essentially keep the server bills going.

The idea of The Sil going online-only is an interesting point. @test makes a valid point that display ads don't bring in the same ad revenue as print ads, but the advantage The Sil has is their target audience being much more hyper-defined and students are a target market that is highly sought after by advertisers. With the proper sales team in place, hitting up local businesses, they have a unique property that can demand much higher CPM rates than the industry standard for typical Google ads, etc.

Printed paper is nice but not necessary in today's digital world. Maybe they should focus on making a Sil tablet app. All major news outlets have gone in that direction these days. Digital has minimal expense. What are the other university campuses doing, do they all still have printed papers?

If they did that, it would save them 110,000 in printing costs and would cut down on the 28,000 in layout expenses. Assuming they would still have to design display ads for their advertisers for the online portion, if you take 2/3rds of the layout expenses out and add the savings from the printing, they could potentially save $128,000 (approx 70% of their entire budget - not factoring in the ad revenues).

Or they could use that 128k to invest into building a killer news app or mac-specific community/social news app to have their articles but also add a layer of video, user-generated real-time content, discussion, etc.

Other thoughts: For those against online-only, what about magazine vs paper format. It's been said that students aren't as interested in the 'newspaper' format, as it's considered an old format. But if The Sil were a glossy magazine with a lot of photos and graphical content, would it increase readership? What if they went the route of a "hamilton magazine" style... would it interest students more? Full-page glossy full-colour ads could command higher advertising prices and bring them more ad revenue to cover expenses. I'm not sure what the cost differences are between printing their paper format vs glossy magazine, but with a magazine being smaller in size I would assume similar or less?