UCI Newspapers Fear Losing Voice

Writers for the Generic Alternative--one of six newspapers operated by special-interest groups at UC Irvine--are proud that their “politically radical” newspaper is printed on 100% recycled paper, fits easily into a backpack and is free.

Unlike many forms of media, the point of publication here is not to make money, says staff member Eric Mittler.

Whether the majority of UCI’s student body voters are willing to directly support the alternative press on campus will be decided the first week of May. Students will vote on whether they want to add $1 to their fees to further fund the alternative newspapers.

Scraping together enough cash to keep the presses rolling is a big challenge for these papers, and the outcome of the vote may decide their future. Editors fear that like Americans refusing to pay higher taxes, students will rebel against paying more fees.

“As the name alternative suggests, these are publications for everybody outside the mainstream society, but ideally they should be read by the mainstream,” John Refling, 29, a graduate student in electrical engineering and the editor of the Phoenix, another alternative paper. “Because of that, it’s not the kind of thing the average person wants to fund.”

“We definitely have a sense of purpose,” Mittler said of the Generic Alternative. “We report on things that we feel other newspapers won’t report on.”

He referred to a recently published story about a woman who traveled in Malaysia to investigate the state of Vietnamese refugees. “She had some really intense stories to tell,” he said. “She couldn’t get publicity in other newspapers.”

Writers working for the six alternative publications at UCI have agendas of their own: The Generic Alternative presents the perspective of the campus’s political left; Umoja, from a Kiswhaili word meaning unity, serves the black community; the Women’s Quarterly focuses on the feminist community at Irvine; La Voz Mestiza presents the views of the Latino community; East West Ties is “the voice” of the Asian community, and the Phoenix, which is set to publish again after a two-quarter absence, presents the gay and lesbian community viewpoint on campus.

If the fee measure fails, the publications probably won’t receive as much money from their primary funding source, the student government, which is facing budget constraints. The publications may be asked to supplement much of their $21,000 in operating costs through more advertising.

That, many of the staffers say, will mean the newspapers’ demise.

“I think it is a perception that in terms of local ads, Orange County is a very conservative area,” said Darryl Low, a senior and the head of the school’s media board. “It would be difficult for publications that serve the black community, the Hispanic community, the gay and lesbian community . . . to find local advertising given the conservative area.”

Making the challenge to raise revenue more difficult are editors who say they won’t run ads from companies that tread on their values. La Voz Mestiza, for example, won’t run ads from a beer company it perceives as racist and anti-labor.

Student staffers put in long hours for minute salaries for the opportunity to be heard. The six staffers at La Voz Mestiza, for example, each receive about $30 a quarter.

“I’m here (in college) because other people have struggled and died so that I could be here,” said Danielle Little, editor of Umoja. “I think I would be doing a disservice if my only goal was to get in, get a degree, get out and get a job with IBM.”

“There’s a lot of talk about cultural diversity,” said Rico Frias, 22, editor of La Voz Mestiza. “I don’t think you can believe in cultural diversity and want to cut us off.”

Although financially constrained, the students have editorial autonomy. They decide on the story ideas, write, edit and lay out the pages. And because there isn’t a journalism school at UCI, they never receive official advice.

The winter issue of Umoja, for example, featured a list of accomplishments by blacks that history books often ignore. The Women’s Quarterly included an interview with a woman afflicted with the AIDS virus who has been segregated from other prisoners at the California Institute for Women in Frontera.

In the fall edition of La Voz Mestiza, an article written in Spanish on author Carlos Fuentes was beside an article on student apathy printed in English. The newspaper for the campus Asian community, East West Ties, featured a Page One commentary comparing the radical change in Eastern Europe with the move toward democracy in China.

During the late 1960s, alternative newspapers and magazines flourished. But such student government-funded papers as the ones at UCI are rare, said Rick Pullen, a professor of communications at Cal State Fullerton, a campus that has no alternative media.

Even during the ‘60s, the dissident press was self-supporting, Pullen said, and it would now be impossible to fund every special interest group’s request to publish its viewpoint.

“If they can’t exist on their own,” he said, “then maybe they shouldn’t exist.”

George Harmon, an instructor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, predicts an explosion of student newspapers in the 1990s as the desktop publishing revolution takes hold.

“Freedom of the press belongs to those who own a Macintosh or who can borrow one,” Harmon said.