Howard U. halts student newspaper print edition

“There’s not enough money that would allow them to print a daily between now and the end of the year.”
-Ron HarrisUniversity spokesperson
WASHINGTON D.C. – A Howard University policy board decided that the print edition of the student newspaper will not be published for the rest of the school year, but the paper will continue publishing online as the staff tries to dig itself out of a financial crisis.
“There’s not enough money that would allow them to print a daily between now and the end of the year,” University spokesperson Ron Harris told Black College Wire late Wednesday, March 26.
The division of student affairs has agreed to pay for a special print graduation issue in May and will pay the salaries of the staff publishing online for the rest of the school year, Harris said.
Last week, the top editor of the Hilltop, Drew Costley, said the paper owed its printer, the Washington Times, $48,000 for past printing bills. At a March 6 meeting of the paper’s policy board, the decision was made to stop printing for an unspecified amount of time.
Since news broke last week about the situation, more than $20,000 has been raised for the paper by various campus departments, faculty, staff and alumni, Harris said. But the board determined it was not enough.
Harris said the university is continuing to pay down the printing debt, and he did not know if the paper would be responsible for repaying the university.
In addition to the overdue printing bills, the Hilltop has had to deal with missing funds and unpaid advertising. In a March 21 interview, Costley said that the business office had not sent out invoices and tearsheets to advertisers for a month and a half during the fall, resulting in $40,000 to $45,000 in lost revenue.
In January $20,000 was missing from the paper’s account and no one seemed to know where it had gone, he said. On March 26, Harris said that as the result of an “accounting error,” some money had been missing from the paper’s account, but he did not know when.
“Some money was inadvertently transferred to a different account and as soon as that mistake was discovered that money was transferred back,” he said.
For now, Harris said the university has created a subcommittee within the policy board to determine what systemic issues contributed to the current financial crisis and how to avoid a similar situation in the future.
“The ideal solution is for the Hilltop to be printing daily as it was before,” Harris said. Sources at the latest policy board meeting said those in attendance had been instructed not to speak with the media.
Harris said Costley was not at the meeting. Costley did not return several phone calls and emails seeking comment.
Shauntel Lowe is a recent UCLA graduate and a regular contributor to Black College Wire.