The student newspaper of the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) is sounding the alarm: if the trend continues, it may have to stop printing in the near future. At Montreal Campus as in other student newspapers, survival is negotiated from year to year.
Juggling with uncertain funding for the UQAM student newspaper, “it’s a story that repeats itself every year, for every team,” explains the editor-in-chief of the Montreal Campus, Marie-Soleil Lajeunesse.
In 2022-2023, we will have to inform UQAM students with what is “probably one of the smallest budgets” ever observed since the beginnings of the newspaper, a little over $6,000.
“We are totally in survival mode”, drops Mme The youth.
Founded in 1980, the Montreal Campus is the student newspaper of the university community. He has contributed to the training of a good number of journalists who work today everywhere in the Quebec media.
Until 2010, the editorial staff of Montreal Campus was paid for her work. All are now volunteers.
The newspaper now publishes two print editions, but with rising printing costs – eating up half of the budget – and falling advertising revenues, the November issue may have been the last.
We would like to take a digital turn, push social networks even more, improve or redo our website, but we don’t have the means, we don’t have the developers.
Sandrine Côté, Information Director of the Montreal Campus
The paper edition nevertheless remains important, adds Marie-Soleil Lajeunesse. “We really do everything from A to Z and it’s extremely rewarding, knowing that almost all of us are journalism students and that’s what we want to do later. »
Difficult funding
Contrary to what happens in other universities, the journal is not financed by a subscription paid by all the students.
At McGill University, for example, students pay a $6 membership fee each semester which goes to a non-profit organization that brings together the English-language student newspaper McGill Daily and its French counterpart, The offense.
These two newspapers had to lead a campaign this fall to survive: the students of McGill University had to decide on the maintenance of the contribution by referendum.
To levy such a contribution, the team of the Montreal Campus obtain the unanimous support of the seven faculty associations. In the past, “some faculty associations were very cold” to this idea, illustrates Sandrine Côté.
The newspaper must therefore turn to other subsidies. “As a recognized student group, Montreal Campus already has access to the student project grant program of the University’s Student Life Services,” writes the director of UQAM’s communications department, Caroline Tessier.
There is no guarantee that we will get these grants every year or that we will get the maximum possible.
Marie-Soleil Lajeunesse, editor-in-chief of Montreal Campus
As editor-in-chief, she is responsible for putting together files “to remind people how important the Montréal Campus is”.
“A springboard” for journalists
Former editor of Montreal Campus and now a journalist at Radio-Canada, François-Alexis Favreau took an interest in student newspapers as part of his master’s degree in communications at UQAM.
“Unlike official university communications, which will always relay good news, the student newspaper is there to relay the best and the worst. We can cover the victory of the university’s favorite sports team, but also hound management when a new policy is announced,” illustrates Mr. Favreau.
Over the past few months, the Montreal Campus wrote about unsanitary conditions in university residences, about students running for politics, but also about the impact of public denunciations for a student accused of sexual misconduct, a report that won an award for journalist Fannie Arcand .
If he believes that there will always be volunteers who will want to do journalism at the university, François-Alexis Favreau believes that the situations where the financial precariousness of student newspapers threatens their existence “may increase in the coming years”.
Participating in a student newspaper is a “springboard”, he recalls.
“It’s a very practical experience. It takes a place to break your teeth, and the student newspaper is a place to do it, ”said Mr. Favreau.
Even though they know they can’t compete with the mainstream media, “student newspapers are very serious in their practices,” he continues.
“Journalists are working hard to come up with a production that is worthy of a journalist ready to enter the mainstream media,” explains Mr. Favreau.
For the sake of transparency, the author of these lines would like to point out that, like many journalists, she was part of the Montreal Campus.
Learn more
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- $150,000
- Budget of Montreal Campus in 1998-1999
source: La Presse, November 13, 1999
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- 37,000
- Number of students at the University of Quebec in Montreal
source: UQAM