Last week, the Journalism Club released its first issue of The Davis Beat, an independent publication hoping to deliver investigative journalism and provide an alternate source of news to the campus.
Editor in chief Adrian Glass-Moore and managing editor Kevin Pelstring obtained approximately $1,675 in initial funding from ASUCD’s Club Finance Council (CFC) and $150 from the Student Assistants to the Chancellor to produce the biweekly paper.
With the approximate cost of $460 per issue and a plan to distribute 2,000 copies every other week, The Davis Beat plans to eventually sustain itself through advertisements, as there is a cap on the amount of money a club can receive from the CFC.
It’s no lie that print journalism isn’t as popular as it used to be. And we know all too well the financial needs of producing a daily paper for the past hundred or so years. If The Davis Beat can secure enough print advertisements to stay afloat after the initial funding runs out, then we will be impressed. It’s a hard market, and we wish them luck.
According to the “About Us” section in the first issue as well as the website davisbeat.org, the newspaper wants to make clear that they “recognize the importance of investigative journalism; going deep into stories and pulling out truths beyond what meets the eye.” The paragraph goes on to say that readers “deserve a newspaper that will tackle issues critically … that takes journalistic integrity and factuality with utmost seriousness.”
We did not see these investigative pieces in the first issue, but we hope to see them in the next.
It’s important to note that many of The Davis Beat editors are involved with ASUCD. It will be interesting to see how certain student government topics are investigated, given the many potential conflicts of interest.
Best of luck to the editors, writers and photographers involved with The Davis Beat. We applaud fellow students for taking the initiative to publish their writing and opinions in a startup publication.
