JANUARY 31, 2007

Managing Editor Mélene Bemard

Union ine. The Coda reserves the right to edit submissions for content and/or

clarity. All materials contained herein,

and protected under Canadian copyright

laws. Material submitted and printed

herein become the property of Ti Cadre and ues not be ——* without

Rob Walker Editor in Chief

So it turns out that actor Dave Foley is

a bit of a prima donna. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find any hotel staff that would divulge what name

he had booked his room undet. I did, however, have a couple of beers with Nardwuar, who turned out to be a really down-to-earth guy. He still does a weekly show on the UBC campus radio station and has been for about 20 years.

I feel bad for everyone else at the conference, really. It rained pretty solidly the entire time we were there, save for one happy Saturday afternoon. But really, what else could you expect from Van- couver, British Columbia? Just because it cleared up during the extra week I spent there doesn’t mean they should resent

e...right?

The conference itself was eventful, with Ian Hanomansing, Nardwuar and Jian Ghomeshi of Moxy Fruvous pro- viding a lot of insight and entertainment as the keynote speakers each evening. Ian Hanomansing had a question period and I asked him: “Helen Thomas of the Washington Press Corps was quoted as saying ‘there is a distinct lack of cour- age in journalism today’, what do you think?”

His answer was loosely: “The Ameri- can media has certainly failed the public, but I think the Canadian media is on the

_ ball. Where else can a 25 year old student

stand up and ask the Prime Minister a question?”

Which is actually bullshit, when you think about it. Stephen Harper stopped

Vancouver.

Managing Editor, Mel, with Kade cae the Human Serviette at the conference in

A DITORIA

THE CADRE ° 2

Right Here and Now

giving press conferences almost a year ago, and if Ian Hanomansing thinks I could just walk right in and start ask-

ing questions, whether in private or in a scrum/legislative press conference, he’s off his rocker. I would have told him so, but it was a huge room and I already had to shout my question, and I didn’t feel like getting into a shouting match with one of Canada’s best-known journalists.

There were seminars on everything from newsroom management, to design, to running a pirate television station. Managing editor extraordinaire Mel Bernard and I split up the seminars and roundtables as evenly as possible, mixing in seminars on Investigative Journalism along with roundtable discussions on autonomy.

The roundtable discussions were by far the most interesting and informative ses- sions held this year. Members of papers from all over Canada sat in a circle and discussed issues common to all papers, issues that are only inherent in certain types of regions and school sizes and tried to figure out solutions to them.

For instance, did you know we're still one of the only student newspapers in Canada that doesn’t pay their editors at least part-time wages? Or the only paper I could find in talking to 200+ delegates that doesn’t have separate levy fees for their paper? For instance, in BC they charge $10 a student for 23,000 students for their paper, in Nova Newfoundland it’s $2 for about 13,000. Whereas here in PEI, we’re just lumped in with the stu- dent union. We still have a budget, but it’s taken from the larger student union amount. Why is this an issue? Well, say we have a really good year and start post-

mis

ie) baie tae

Editor in Chief Rob eating sushi in

Vancouver

ing a profit with our advertising revenue. If we were levied, our costs would already be covered and that extra money could be used to bring wages in line with the rest of the country, buy more equip- ment like decent cameras, recording equipment and half-decent computers (try laying out a paper on an older dell, it’s brutal). Instead, any excess money just gets shifted to another student union atea. There’s no way for us to get ahead, the way the system is set up now.

If anyone’s curious, the Cadre has an operating budget of around $22,000 a year. That evens out to about $4 a year per student, or $2 a semester. At 16 pa- pers a year, you’re paying about a quartet per issue. Pretty cheap, I'd say.

That’s not the only place where we slip in comparison to most other papers in Canada, including many who are the same size or smaller than ours. I think it’s about time we decide to shit or get off the pot with The Cadre. Are we pre- pared, as students, to give the autonomy needed to run a paper in a democratic system? To give us the resources we need to do our job? I’m not asking for any more money, our student fees are high enough, just an official separation of the money that’s already set aside each year for The Cadre.

Or will we continuously allow our student paper to be hamstrung by policy that, as the years previous to this one have shown, simply do not work to keep a consistent level of reporting and talent at The Cadre. I’m proud of this paper and all the hard work that’s gone in to it by my phenomenal staff (who worked on this issue while I was networking in BC). Why don’t you show your pride and ask your student union rep to do the right thing, make the paper autonomous.