After uproar, college paper takes a break

Thursday, Oct. 25, 2007 | 7:43 a.m.

The College of Southern Nevada's newspaper is not publishing for the first time in a decade.

The new faculty adviser said the Coyote Press is on a one-semester hiatus so he has time to revamp the paper. He wants to end a period of instability that has included three advisers since fall 2005 and an allegation that at least one student was fired over a story and others were not paid.

What happened and why are unclear, but one thing is certain: Students have no newspaper in which to express their ideas at CSN this fall.

"It's always going to be a loss if there's no paper," said April Corbin, the Coyote Press' layout editor last school year. "I feel like, yeah, it needs to be revamped, but what about students who would like to be writing now?"

Logan Aimone, executive director of the Associated Collegiate Press, a membership organization that provides networking opportunities and other services to student journalists, said, "In my experience, which is limited, I sure haven't heard of very many (college newspapers) that have gone on hiatus as a way to retool."

What seems more typical, Aimone said, is for restructuring to take place "in the background" while a newspaper publishes.

But some college leaders, including the student body president and Arnold Bell, the new adviser, say a break could help the Coyote Press analyze what went wrong and fix problems.

Turmoil at the Coyote Press began after the paper ran a story in December 2005 criticizing a proposal to move English department journalism courses to the communication department. Longtime newspaper adviser Adrian Havas, who was on sabbatical, had passed details of the proposal to interim adviser Sherry Rosenthal, who in turn had shared it with Coyote Press staff.

After the story ran, student editor Harley Murray said she was fired by Carlos Campo, then-interim dean of arts and letters. Stephanie Lopez, another editor at the time, said she also lost her job, but she declined to say who at CSN gave her the news. Murray thinks she was fired because of the article - ironic, she said, because a newspaper is meant to be a free speech forum.

"The whole idea is we're demanding our freedoms," she said.

Campo, now interim vice president of academic affairs, acknowledges he was unhappy with the article, but said he made no staffing decisions about student editors.

Also caught up in the article's aftermath were Havas and Rosenthal, who said they had to answer questions from a college attorney about their influence on the story.

Havas did not return as adviser. He said he asked for his job back but didn't get it. Campo said Havas said he no longer wanted to be involved with the Coyote Press.

Since 2005, the newspaper has struggled to reestablish itself at CSN.

Corbin, who now attends UNLV, where she writes for the student newspaper Rebel Yell, said working at the Coyote Press last year was "masochistic."

"It was so haphazard," she said. "We didn't have a set schedule, a set deadline of when the paper was supposed to come out."

Exacerbating the situation, Corbin and Leilani Zee, a writer and managing editor last year, said they and other contributors didn't receive paychecks they were expecting.

Campo acknowledged that the Coyote Press has had staffing and other problems. But he was surprised by the allegations of workers going unpaid and encouraged those who thought they were shortchanged to contact CSN. All journalism classes now fall under the communication department.

Staffing, he said, is difficult when so many students work full-time jobs. A new prerequisite for a journalism course that helps train Coyote Press workers has complicated recruitment efforts, he added.

The newspaper "is simply trying to recover from the growing pains that follow any new program and the disastrous effects of the 2005 article that we are only now getting past," Campo said in an e-mail.

Havas said, under his watch, he had no problem finding students to work for the paper. Whatever the reasons for diminished staff, a hiatus is a bad thing, he said.

"This is what I'm concerned about, that students don't have an outlet to express themselves," Havas said. "I'm appalled. This is a public college of 35,000 students."

Campo said Havas is welcome to participate in developing the Coyote Press. But Havas said he's not interested if new adviser Bell's plan is to destroy tradition.

Aimone of the Associated Collegiate Press said a break could be beneficial if the paper returns as a stronger voice for students. But if the Coyote Press comes back "neutered," focusing more on public relations for the college than on critical journalism, the hiatus could be seen as "the first step in a rapid decline" in the newspaper's quality.

Student body President Taylor Gray says he's 100 percent behind Bell's break:

"What's going to be nice about it is we'll be able to stop and analyze where the paper was weak in the past and make it stronger."

For his part, Bell thinks that students have lost interest in their paper and that a break offers a chance "to tweak it and make it more appealing."

He has used the time, he said, to recruit students on CSN's three main campuses and to write grants seeking funding for the paper. And he is hosting a competition soliciting name and logo ideas from students.

A journalism course Bell is planning aims to introduce students to all aspects of newspapering, from marketing to writing and shooting photographs. He hasn't yet developed a syllabus. He says he hasn't examined the content of past courses associated with the Coyote Press because he wants to "start from scratch."

He has assembled an interdisciplinary faculty advisory board that will help teach students how to gather news and make suggestions to writers regarding topics.

He wants, he said, a clean break from a messy past.