The University Observer?

likelydropout

While looking at the budget for this year I noted that the Observer is given €50,000 euro in funding from the SU and it seemed an extraordinary cost!
Considering the budget given to Campaigns, STI Subsidy, Welfare fund and grant funding equals to only €35,000 (services in my opinion, of far greater importance).
The tribune manages without help from the SU, and in my opinion were far quicker to report on college news online in resent months.
Does anyone else find this funding a tad high?

RayCarley

If you do a search on this forum you fill find a big thread already discussing this.

The fact is that although they are given a budget of €50k, they rarely spend even half of this. It was also brought before student council this year to remove this budget, but the motion was rejected.

As I said, search for that other thread.

Fad

RayCarley wrote: »

If you do a search on this forum you fill find a big thread already discussing this.

The fact is that although they are given a budget of €50k, they rarely spend even half of this. It was also brought before student council this year to remove this budget, but the motion was rejected.

As I said, search for that other thread.

The person who put it forward withdrew it, wasn't rejected.

But I've lost count how many times people think reading the 50 grand figure in the budget and thinking that they're the first person to ever notice...

Raphael

Also, I have it from a good source that the Tribune is funded, just not by the SU.

delta_bravo

€16,000 on telephone and postage would raise a lot more questions for me than the observer fee

parker kent

The money spent on leaflets for elections would interest me. As would the cost of running elections as they currently are, instead of using online voting.

AIR-AUSSIE

Raphael wrote: »

Also, I have it from a good source that the Tribune is funded, just not by the SU.

Would you mind elaborating?

Do you mean its funded by advertising? Or that some organisation / company is funding it?

ironclaw

I just want to know in general where all the money goes. There is an obscene amount of money funneled into the SU and I can't for the life of me see any results from it. Bar maybe the odd colorful poster.

ThisIsNonsense

AIR-AUSSIE wrote: »

Would you mind elaborating?

Do you mean its funded by advertising? Or that some organisation / company is funding it?

They are registered as a society so they receive Society Funding from the university.

A not-for-profit newspaper cannot function on advertising revenue alone. Therefore both newspapers need funding.

Raphael

The Tribune is funded, aside from its advertising, to a degree by the University, which in turn gets its money from the fees paid by the student body anyway. Both are funded by the students, the cash is just allocated through different ways. Further - though you'll obviously need to check this with the Trib or its alumnu - the Tribune has been consistently loss-making, and only gets by on an annual basis through the generosity of its alumni editors who regularly put their hands into their own pockets to keep it funded.

That's from Gav Reilly, who's a UCD alumnus and former deputy editor of the Observer, from a discussion on my Livejournal.

keepkeyyellow

I'm not even gonna bother with this one.

Case in point, UCDObs is funded by the SU the budget is only a projection in reality it's under have that when you add in advertising revenue. The Tribune while technically independent is funded from the college. It's not as if they pay for their office and telephone themselves.

And you can argue all you want about how much of a waste of space the Observer is or how it litters campus but at the end of the day the vast majority of students don't care so nothing will rise up out of this thread.

Now for essays.

melekalikimaka

GCD runs its own magazine, editor get paid per mag, nothing huge, funds everything else itself, shared resources for equipment.

i know its smaller scale... but serious trimmings could be done

ThisIsNonsense

melekalikimaka wrote: »

GCD runs its own magazine, editor get paid per mag, nothing huge, funds everything else itself, shared resources for equipment.

i know its smaller scale... but serious trimmings could be done

Those "trimmings" would undermine the quality of the paper and ultimately ruin some students college experiences.

parker kent

ThisIsNonsense wrote: »

Those "trimmings" would undermine the quality of the paper and ultimately ruin some students college experiences.

To quote your username, This Is Nonsense!

Are you actually suggesting that cuts to the Observer would ruin some students experiences? How so? I have written for the newspaper, so I am in a decent position to argue about this view. For starters, it is generally seen as a mild entertainment for students to read when they are bored. The vast majority are pretty blasé about the paper. It is fantastic experience for the people who work in editorial and design roles, so those people may have gripes were the budget cut.

But to suggest it would ruin some students college experience is daft, unless you mean the people paid to work for the newspaper. Student contributors, such as myself, just saw it as a bit of fun. It wouldn't have bothered me if it didn't happen. And the general student body would be blasé to say the least about its existence.