Student Paper at Harbor College Resumes Publication

The student paper at Los Angeles Harbor College, which shut down last month because of budget cuts, resumed publication this week after a series of news stories publicized the paper’s demise and students petitioned the administration for its reinstatement.

“The Tides looks great,” said Chris McCarthy, director of the communications division. “It looks better than it ever has.”

McCarthy said publicity helped bring the campus voice back to the two-year community college in Wilmington. The semester’s first issue came out Wednesday. McCarthy said two journalism classes, one of which puts out the paper, were targeted for cancellation in August by college administrators, who set enrollment limits for the classes to zero, effectively barring students from signing up.

“For the first two weeks of the semester we didn’t allow anybody to enroll,” McCarthy said. “After the (newspaper) articles appeared, I got a call from the president saying we had part-time funds available.”

McCarthy said he then contacted Phillip Sanfield, a news editor for the Daily Breeze, who agreed to take the post as adviser for the student paper. Sanfield was co-adviser to the weekly paper last year.

Although the college could only offer Sanfield, 32, part-time pay for what amounts to a full-time job, Sanfield said he could not stand by and watch the paper fold.

“You never want to see students who are interested in journalism not have anywhere to go,” he said. “I don’t think anybody who is associated with this business wants to see a college paper close.”

So Sanfield, who continues to work at the Breeze and did not plan to teach this year, began teaching the reopened journalism classes three weeks after the fall semester started. He said the paper would be published every other week instead of weekly because of budget constraints.

Sanfield said many students learned about the paper’s demise through articles that appeared in three local papers. Students who had not been associated with the paper petitioned college administrators to reinstate the paper, and past writers for The Harbor Tides bombarded the communications department and Sanfield with phone calls.

One of the students who called Sanfield was Alex Carrillo, 22. “The effect (of the publicity) was enormous,” he said, adding that he learned about the shutdown from a newspaper story. “I’ve been writing for this paper for a year, and at this point in time, we have a bigger staff than we had for all of last year combined.”

Student Ed Waterman, 24, also read about the paper’s shutdown in a local paper. “I was so shocked that I was considering writing an underground paper.”

Waterman, who had not planned to write for The Harbor Tides, became so involved with a petitioning effort to get the paper back that he decided to join the staff. The paper now has 10 reporters.

“I feel pretty stoked,” Carrillo said. “Not just to see my name in print, but to see other people’s names in print that haven’t contributed before. It’s like starting something new again.”