In the spirit of journalism, I would like to be transparent with all our readers, writers and supporters in regards to The Etownian’s budget. For those of you who don’t know me, I am Andi Gates, a junior English Professional Writing and Communications Journalism dual major who was appointed as Editor-in-Chief of The Etownian starting this fall. 

This summer, I was made aware of the organization’s spending habits from last fiscal year. We were left with a significant deficit in our budget. There are many changes we as an organization are taking to cut costs and create a sustainable spending plan. 

I met with The Etownian’s advisor, business manager and managing editor the first week of classes to review our spending from last fiscal year and determine what needed to change. We ultimately came to the decision to print less issues, cancel unnecessary subscriptions and suspend writer pay for this semester. 

The Etownian is dedicated to reporting campus news as often as we can, which has increased the amount we spend on printing. We don’t plan on reporting less news, instead we have adjusted our print schedule. Issues will be printed on a bi-weekly basis while running stories online only in the weeks the paper is not printed. As much as I personally enjoy picking up a physical paper, it is simply not cost effective for the amount of issues we now write per semester.

Additionally, we noticed that the club has subscriptions to a social media scheduling platform and a few other unnecessary platforms that we plan to cancel. 

Having started as a writer myself, it was hard to come to the decision that writer pay should be suspended. As a group, we reviewed all our options including those listed above and decided that this had to be another part of our budget evaluation. While I believe that writer pay is a necessity, it is a big expense for the organization that we need to evaluate. Our hope is to reinstate writer pay in the spring semester. 

I plan to meet with our business manager to discuss how the writer payment model needs to change to be sustainable for years to come. Determining a new rate for writer compensation is a part of many decisions we have made to create a sustainable model for spending and writer pay. While the planning process will be long-term, again, I hope to pay writers starting in Spring 2026. Changes in writer pay will be communicated to our writers when plans are finalized.

The School of Arts and Humanities was able to offer their support for the publication and covered some of the budget deficit. I would like to thank Dr. Kevin Shorner-Johnson and the School of Arts and Humanities for their generous contribution to The Etownian. We are incredibly grateful for your generosity, contribution and continued support to student-led media on campus.

I would like to thank you, our writers, our readers, and our faculty for supporting The Etownian over the years. We plan to continue to communicate with you as we make a plan for the future. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to our club advisor Erica Dolson (dolsone@etown.edu) or me (editor@etown.edu). Thank you for your continued support and dedication to keeping the campus community informed.

Sincerely,

Andrew Gates

Editor-in-Chief, The Etownian