UNLV’s independent student newspaper, The Rebel Yell, is in trouble.
And no, it doesn’t have to do with the paper’s recent name change.
In 2012, the paper decided not to take funding from the school’s student government if it meant the student body president would have a say in choosing its editor.
Without that funding, the paper is struggling. It needs $30,000 by the end of the month to keep printing.
“We’re just asking anyone who cares about the paper — student, alum — to help contribute to that,” editor in chief Bianca Cseke told KNPR's State of Nevada.
The money would be a band-aid instead of a permanent fix because UNLV's Student Life, which funds the paper now, is giving it less and less every year.
Cseke said a permanent fix could come in the form of a $2 fee for every student, but that measure would have to be approved by the Board of Regents next year.
Blaze Lovell is the managing editor of the paper. He said students already pay fees for facilities and amenities — some of which they don't use — so paying a small fee for the newspaper would not be unusual.
One of the biggest costs of the paper is printing it, but switching to an online-only format is not option, according to Lovell.
“Our business manager did a cost-benefit analysis, and just looking at the finances, even she came to the conclusion that having an online-only publication wouldn’t be beneficial to us,” he said.
To make ends meet, the paper has cut staff and cut salaries, but Cseke said making positions at the paper unpaid would not work. To do that, the paper would need to become a class inside the journalism school or a student club.
“Right now, one of our biggest issues is turnover," Cseke said. "It is really difficult to keep a quality product or keep moving forward solving issues from past years without a solid group of students who stay for more than just semester at a time.”
And she said as a student club, accountability would be a problem.
If the paper folds, Lovell said the students at UNLV will lose a valuable independent voice and journalism students will lose out on important experience.
Bianca Cseke, editor in chief, Rebel Yell; Blaze Lovell, managing editor, Rebel Yell