From the EIC:
The former Red & Black staff met with the publisher and a Red & Black board member this afternoon. We went in to re-approach the situation, but they refused to speak to us on the record. We spoke off the record and presented our concerns about prior review, lack of student input and the removal of Ed Stamper from the board of The Red & Black. Stamper is the board member who wrote the draft of the internal memo. Our goal is to return to The Red & Black as a student-sourced, student-written, student-designed and student-approved publication, as the paper has been since it broke from the University. The former student staff is dedicated to journalism and will continue to independently produce content covering the University of Georgia and the Athens community.
Red and Dead 
By what fiscal means do you propose to produce your new product? Has your integrity, self-importance and intellectualism actually super-ceded your business plan?
I’m sure they were all making bank working for the Red & Black.
Ever hear of the internet? You can put up a web site for next to nothing as well as pushing all the content you post through free social media outlets.
Jake, are you criticizing the former staff members for having integrity?!
Mr. Jarmel, I’m not sure you realize this, but among journalists, integrity and intelligence are not things to be derided.
As a blogger, I have to say that the internet is a wonderful place to get content out quickly and, if you’re willing to sacrifice format, for free. Even if you’re not willing to sacrifice format, web hosting can be done for relatively cheap.
It’s good for student journalists to not give up their journalistic integrity. Were they to stay for the money, that would be the definition of “selling out.”
Obviously Mr. Jarmel underestimates the integrity, ingenuity, or financial capability of the UGA alumni. We are many. WE ARE DAWGS!
The Human Trilogy would be more than happy to help you guys in any way we can. We need more journalism, less cronyism.
Thank you, from a reader, a writer, and an American.
They have the Internet, Jake. They don’t need a business plan beyond paying for server space. These are students, get it? They’re in this to cover news and learn. Their main mission is not perpetuating a 501(c)3 institution.
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That’s the thing about a student newspaper: No students, no paper. And as the former R&Bers / reborn R&Ders are quickly establishing, they don’t really *need* paper to commit journalism. They just need freedom, friends and an audience — and they’ve got all three.
To put it simply: integrity *is* their business plan.
They have principles, to be sure. As the former managing editor of my campus paper I’m appalled by the arrogance of the board and applaud the stand the staff is taking. However, I don’t find integrity in walking out on an issue hours before it’s due to go to press. They had an obligation to the advertisers to produce the product for which they were contracted, but it was the staff that remained behind who made that happen.
The print edition is no longer the focus of the R&B, and their statement would have been just as effective after it was put to bed.
Former staffers, say more! I get it: you’re being professional, it was off the record, you want to crack the media establishment one day. But a brief statement like this, with no substance?
You have a huge opportunity – a responsibility! – to tell this story. A lot of people are listening. It’s a story not just about students who quit a paper because they refused to turn it into a content farm for advertisers, but also about the misuse of a 501(c)(3) for the benefit of one man and possibly others. If you tell the story honestly and well, you will have created important and high-interest journalism, and you will be on your way to careers in journalism. If you back off now, taking what you think is the high road, what a chance missed!
What’s more – Montevideo is already characterizing you as “emotional,” “overreacting,” and generally unreasonable. Tell your story!
I do rather hope this story catches some amount of fire. As a former employee at The University of Alabama’s student publications (yearbook and newspaper), I think you’ll find a LOT of support with many student journalists, and even journalism programs and teachers, across the nation. Had something like this happened at The Crimson White, we certainly would have done the same thing.
Keep up the good fight! The R&B alumni have your back!
Another R&B alum here chiming in. We support you. You obviously know the difference between bad and good journalism… Forward!
Another UGA Alumnus here. During my undergraduate years (seven! I milked it for all I could get out of it.) in Athens I always respected the independent nature of the R&B, even when I disliked a piece. I am very proud of your stubborness. Stick to your guns, and don’t let the bastards get you down.
What is the official Grady College position on this and why hasn’t the dean released a statement supporting the student journalists? Given Middleton’s role as both head of the journalism department and part of the Red and Black board, Grady College is square in the middle of this, whether they were involved in the takeover or not. If the Board prevails, no student with any sense of integrity will want to enroll in the journalism program at Grady. But here is the weird part: a major PR debacle is threatening the reputation of what has been considered one of the nation’s top journalism programs, but the College of Journalism and Mass Communication has not even acknowledged there’s a problem! (Suddenly the Grady PR program is not looking very good either if this is the best it can do on the crisis communication front — unless of course the counsel of those professors has been rejected by the powers that be!) This is no longer simply a journalism issue — it is a crisis communication issue that is likely affect Grady’s enrollment and fundraising for a long time to come.
The reality is this: once each one of you student Journalists graduate and secure employment within the mainstream media, you will be told what to write and how to write. If, for instance, you’re told that the foundations of Western Civilization rest largely upon the efforts of burr-headed people, then that’s what you’ll write. But since the media is mostly liberal and most journalists are the same, you won’t mind. It’s the truth-seeking right-of-center journalists who will have to decide between doing what they’re told, or selling out. But, again, most of you are destined to be sell-outs. Get over it. Ward Kendall, author of Hold Back This Day and The Towers of Eden.
Given the number of people who become journalists, mainstream and non-mainstream alike, who is to say that the majority of THESE journalists will sell out when they are demonstrating a highly refined sense of ethics? If you truly believe most journalists do sell out then you should be supporting them, not hurting you own argument.
One, that’s just presumptive. Two, that’s rather ignorant. As someone who is actually a published member of the media of the world, not only are there a TON of different jobs for journalists that aren’t what you will like name as liberally biased places, like The New York Times or MSNBC, but I have yet to be told what to write and how to write it in a way that lacks integrity. Heck, I’ve been given a three page spread in a magazine, and my prompt for the story was a single word.
You attempt to claim integrity, claim that you seek truth, yet I feel you likely speak out of total ignorance and false perceptions of reality. And to encourage student journalists who actually ARE attempting to report news as opposed to turning their paper into a PR fluff piece to make the university look good to suck it up and let people tell them what to do while touting the “truth-seeking” integrity of conservative journalists has such a strong vein of irony in it that Alanis Morissette might just add a new verse to her song.
Commenting on the new non-student staff added: there was already a business manager. They did not add one nor replace the existing.