William Freivogel, director of the School of Journalism, said he is optimistic the board will approve the $9 student media fee, which would help fund the university’s student-run newspaper, the Daily Egyptian. 

President Randy Dunn said he predicts the board will not table the student media fee, but will provide an “up or down” vote at the meeting.

Freivogel assembled a Daily Egyptian working group, which consists of six outside professionals in the industry, at Dunn’s request after the fee was tabled at the May 9 board meeting. The group was tasked with finding solutions to ensure the 98-year-old publication does not go out of business.

“Immediately after that May meeting [Dunn] received – I think about 100 communications from Daily Egyptian alums who were very concerned about the future of the Daily Egyptian, who were reacting to that #SavetheDE campaign and were alarmed by what the board had done,” Freivogel said. “[Dunn] had me put together this swat team of media professionals and publishers to give [the fee] one more look.”

Freivogel and five members of the working group, three of which were in person and two of which were on the phone, discussed the future of the publication on a conference call June 12 with Dunn, Dafna Lemish, dean of the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts, and six Daily Egyptian faculty and staff.

Dunn said he participated for the first 30 minutes of the call to provide background to the group, answer questions and articulate his support for the publication.

“The DE is not going to disappear during the time that I’m president of SIU,” Dunn said in an interview Wednesday. “But I also said it’s clear the business model for the DE is going to have to evolve. … One of the things I told Bill Freivogel is the fact that I thought it was really important for them to be able to engage in their deliberations without me as the president or the chancellor kind of sitting there.”

The group, after the hour and a half call, recommended new practices to boost revenue and answered remaining questions about the need for a fee that were sent in a report to Dunn and the board.

“I think what [the report] does is it fills the need for some information that the board hadn’t had to this point,” Dunn said. “Particularly in a couple of specific areas – printing and ad pricing – the board had some very appointed questions that they wanted the group to take a look at, and I will say that this swat team, the working group, did not shy away from those and they tackled them and provided their thinking to the board.”

The report states outsourcing printing alone would save the publication roughly $40,000 to $80,000 a year.

Freivogel said the newspaper is no longer charging ad rates initially complained about by Jason Thomas, publisher of the Carbondale Times. He said the Daily Egyptian will also offer free classified ads to students.

Freivogel said the $9 fee is a fraction of what a small town daily would cost. He said the report does note SIU-Edwardsville has a roughly $7 student fee for its twice per week student-run newspaper, the Alestle.

Several of the 17 potential solutions provided by the group include: considering a subscription for online publication or answering Google Survey questions to view articles, publishing a graduation or back to school edition, holding housing fairs, and selling a university calendar with Daily Egyptian staff photos.

Dunn said while he cannot predict how the board will vote, the Daily Egyptian working group provided a “very thorough report on how the DE can move forward into the future in growing its revenue.”

Freivogel said the student-run newspaper’s future is “cloudy” and will rely on support from the president’s office if the fee is not approved. At the May meeting, Dunn said he would continue to support the Daily Egyptian through the president’s office as previous SIU President Glenn Poshard did, who gave $55,000 from the president’s office to fund the publication through summer 2013.

“From the standpoint of articulating an argument for the importance of the student media fee as some bridge funding, I think they did a good job in that with their report,” Dunn said. “Given that’s the case, that doesn’t translate into a prediction on how the board will vote, but I do think that working group responded to the job put in front of them very well.”