Payroll Cuts Scheduled for Student Media

Ricky Ly, night editor, and LeighAnne Manwarren, online editor, talk after an editors' meeting at the Oklahoma Daily Sunday afternoon. Photo by Hailey Branson

Note: Hailey Branson has been a paid employee of OU Student Media for seven semesters.

Student payroll at the Oklahoma Daily and other OU Student Media departments will be cut by 12 to 20 percent in January, Daily section editors were told Sunday afternoon during a meeting.

Student Media debt continues to grow. Ad sales in both August and September were less than expected, and that loss is added on to a $57,000 loss in fiscal year 2009. The Daily newsroom staff went $100 over budget this week because students turned in time sheets late the week before and were paid this week, said Jamie Hughes, editor-in-chief.

"I don't want to be cutting people's budgets when it's already hard enough to hire reporters," Charles Ward, the Daily's assistant managing editor, said at the meeting Sunday.

Each paid position at the Daily will likely be cut 3 to 5 percent in the spring, Hughes said Sunday. Though talk of cutting publishing to four days a week has been had, doing so is unlikely because the newspaper has been a five-day-a-week publication since 1916, said Judy Gibbs Robinson, adviser to the Daily.