The Independent Florida Alligator

Student paper concerned about news rack policy at Florida

FLORIDA — From free to fee and color to black-and-white newsstands, the University of Florida is attempting to flip the script on campus distribution of publications and the student newspaper isn’t letting the changes go unchallenged.

The Independent Florida Alligator, fearful that changes to the campus distribution policy will have negative impacts on its readership and branding, is in talks with university officials to alter the regulation.

UF Vice President for Business Affairs Ed Poppell and university counsel met with members of the Alligator and its attorney, Thomas Julin, on Friday to talk about these concerns and possible remedies. The result: a plan to implement the regulation on a smaller scale and look for any negative effects.

Pursuant to a board of trustees regulation, this fall the university will start requiring all publications to be distributed from black, modular units on campus.

The new units, black with multiple publication slots, are a major shift from the Alligator’s current stands that are bright orange and blue, pull-down racks with the paper’s logo on the front and back.

The goals of the university are to create a safer environment and a streamlined publication distribution center, university spokeswoman Jenine Sikes said.

“Their haphazard placement can be a danger to pedestrians, drivers and bikers,” Sikes said. “[The modular units] are safer, they look better and they can certainly grow depending on if we have additional publications.”

The university’s goals, however, are possible roadblocks to the Alligator’s efforts to increase readership and maintain a brand identity. The paper argues that the new units will be populated with other publications and won’t be eye-catching to readers.

Approved in December 2009, the Board of Trustees regulation also requires the Alligator to pay a fee per distribution slot on campus. In years previous, the newspaper was allowed to maintain racks on campus for free.

The Alligator is a daily student newspaper that became completely independent from the university in 1973.

“We are the student voice. It comes down to dollars and cents. We paid for those.

Threat to The Independent Florida Alligator « Florida Society of ...

An e-mail addressed to the alumni of The Independent Florida Alligator from President Emeritus Ed Barber describes the University of Florida’s plan to eliminate many of the Alligator’s news racks and replace them with plain, black modular units with multiple publications. 

The Alligator fears this may lessen its reach to readers by restricting branding, curtailing distribution and limiting ease of reader access on campus. Losing readers may ultimately result in the loss of vital advertising revenue, a blow which some fear could silence the publication completely.

The e-mail, which is copied below, urges readers and alumni to write letters about the Alligator’s positive impact and the importance of fair distribution practices.

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Dear Alligator Alumnus or Alumna:

Please pardon me for addressing you in a mass produced letter, but we’re very short on time and had to get this out. You see, we are facing another action by UF that could silence the Alligator forever.

In the Sixties, the Alligator was beset with all sorts of attempts by various people at UF to reign in its aggressive journalism. In a short number of years three editors were fired for insisting on tackling controversial subjects. Several others experienced a great deal of pressure that fell just short of being fired.

Then of course, came the Seventies, with more Alligator hard-hitting stories and editorial leadership of various editors during some rather chaotic times. Regardless of the risk to themselves, standing their ground was a hallmark of most Alligator editors of that decade. And of course, you are very familiar with the great courage by the Alligator editor that ultimately resulted in its becoming independent of UF. But becoming independent meant losing the student fee allocation worth 100 cents on the dollar, a far cry from advertising sales that costs only a little less than our rates. So far, we have saved the student body millions of dollars in accumulated fees.

In the Eighties, Nineties and into this decade, members of the UF administration and various student “leadership” organizations drastically cut advertising dollars spent in the Alligator, and in some cases, blatantly supported competitors. At one time student government started their own student newspaper. This is even with their admission that “everybody reads the Alligator” and “it’s the best way to reach the students.” But it was also admitted that they did not want to support the newspaper with their advertising dollars because of its content.

Student Newspapers Published in Florid, The Independent Florida Alligator

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