Approving proposal hurts student media

EDITORIAL BOARD Editor in
Chief  Timothy Kudo

Managing Editor
 Michael Falcone

Viewpoint Editor
 Cuauhtemoc Ortega

Staff Representatives
 Maegan Carberry
 Edward Chiao
 Kelly Rayburn

Editorial Board Assistants
 Maegan Carberry
 Edward Chiao

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Students must stand up and vote down the Newspaper Readership
Program introduced by the On Campus Housing Council. The program
would allow massive media corporations to infiltrate UCLA in an
attempt to profit from students and drive UCLA’s student
media into the ground.

Under the program, students would be forced to pay for USA
Today, the Wall Street Journal and the L.A. Daily News. The
economic impact this would have on UCLA’s Student Media would
in turn hurt the Daily Bruin, UCLA TV and radio station and the
newsmagazines. Right now, student media performs invaluable
services to its community by providing information specific to UCLA
and giving a voice to minority groups not represented in the
mainstream media. With less resources coming in to student media,
the administration, student government and other groups on campus
would find it even harder to have their actions held accountable to
the public. The campus will feel even less like a community than it
does now.

Unfortunately, UCLA is not the only campus these papers attempt
to exploit. In 1998, a similar program was brought to Penn State
and the student newspaper circulation has declined by 10 percent
each year. If students at UCLA pass this proposal, these media
corporations would only be more willing to move on to the next
victim. Residents must stop this pattern at UCLA by voting the
measure down today.