The Editor of The University Times will not receive accommodation over the summer from next year, the Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) President has said.
The reform was announced by TCDSU President, Kieran McNulty, at a meeting of the union’s council this evening. The change will mean that the editor will no longer receive on-campus accommodation during the summer, despite starting full-time work from July.
The comments from McNulty came during his officer report. The decision to remove accommodation from the The University Times was not discussed at council.
The other sabbatical officers of the union will continue to take up summer accommodation at the beginning of their term in July.
In an email statement to The University Times, McNulty said he had “spoken several times” with the current Editor of The University Times, Sinéad Baker, about the ongoing “financial situation which The University Times faces and I have indicated that this cut was coming”.
McNulty noted that the union is in a “difficult position financially”.
“We have, alongside the UT cut, made several decisions. We have cut the sabbatical officer crossover trip, we have set class rep training spending and campaign spending has been kept to a minimum”, he said. He also noted that the union is looking for new sponsorship and is reviewing its non-The University Times publication budget.
The paper has not been “singled out”, he added.
In an email statement to The University Times, Edmund Heaphy, the first independently elected editor of the paper, was critical of the decision: “I would question why the Editor position was singled out for reduced accommodation costs. The summer workload of the Editor is certainly equal to that of many of the other sabbatical positions, with The University Times publishing year round on its website.”
“There is also the access issue – I know that I would not have been able to take up the position and pay rent myself during the summer months just to be Editor”, Heaphy added.
Heaphy noted that the increase in costs associated with an independent editor should have been foreseen: “It is not clear to me why many of the loss-making aspects of the union haven’t been targeted for cuts before a decision as drastic as this was made. I think council should have been involved in this decision, too.”
In the most recent financial year, Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) recorded a loss of over €30,000. Some of the costs came from the decision to separate the role of editor and communications officer, a decision which resulted in additional salary expenses of around €16,000, alongside around €7,500 in accommodation expenses.
The financial records also revealed that both of the union’s on-campus shops, despite being in the centre of a busy city centre campus, recorded a loss of more than €6,500, a fall from a profit of around €13,200 in the previous year. The SU Cafe also recorded a deficit of €2,052.
Expenditure on staff salaries, which includes the salary of the union’s Administrative Officer, Simon Evans, and other office staff, increased to about €201,000 from €188,300 two years ago. This does not include more than €220,000 spent on wages and salaries of shop staff. Evans, who compiles the accounts, acts as one of the union’s co-treasurers alongside the president.
Despite the change to a full-time Communications & Marketing Officer, the union only recorded a marginal increase of €1,395 in advertising revenue, to around €33,000, according to the accounts. Advertising in The University Times, amounting to around €6,000 (an increase of almost €4,000), is included in this figure, as is income generated from Bank of Ireland and Reads deals with the union that see advertising placed in the newspaper.
The paper’s forecasts an income of nearly €20,000 through both print and online advertising by the end of the current financial year.
The decision to split the Communications Officer role into an independent Editor of The University Times and a separate Communications & Marketing Officer position came about after a constitutional review working group concluded its work in 2014.
The review actually recommended that the Communications Officer and Entertainments Officer posts be merged into one single Entertainments & Marketing Officer post alongside an independent Editor of The University Times. This would have resulted in no additional expenditure. A motion passed at the union’s council, however, argued that there should be a post of Communications & Marketing Officer in addition to an independent Editor.
There was no formal consideration of the impact that this would have on the union’s finances.
Since the first editor of The University Times was elected, the paper has won numerous awards. In April it won six international awards, including including best overall newspaper design and best overall news website, at the Society for News Design (SND) annual conference in San Francisco.
In April, the paper’s Editorial Board was also shortlisted as one of the 12 best editorial boards in the world.
The Editor of The University Times, Sinéad Baker, was unavailable for comment.
