The Cavalier Daily has had a tumultuous history — one that includes name changes (the paper was founded in 1890 as College Topics) and periodic sparring with administrators and nearly every other student organization on Grounds. But during the course of 123 years of publication, one aspect of our organization has, to the best of our knowledge, remained constant: our paper has always been run exclusively by current students.
Student leadership on The Cavalier Daily extends beyond writing and editing articles and snapping photos. Our student staff members keep our website running, manage our business operations and sell our advertisements. Our advertising representatives receive commission for the ads they sell. All our other staff members are unpaid.
The Cavalier Daily receives no funding from the University. A registered nonprofit, we accrue our operating budget solely through the ads we sell.
Our student-only model changes slightly this week. We’re pleased to welcome our first non-student staff member: Kirsten Steuber, a 2012 University graduate whom we’ve hired as a full-time advertising manager.
We see the professional ads manager position as a boon to the student leadership opportunities that The Cavalier Daily offers. By providing guidance to our student advertising representatives, our ads manager will make the paper a more stimulating and enriching place for students interested in the business side of media. And by helping us secure enough advertising revenue to stay afloat, Steuber will assist us in making The Cavalier Daily a place where the University’s aspiring journalists, photographers, artists and media moguls can congregate well into the future.
The Cavalier Daily isn’t the only college paper to seek a professional ads director to help drive growth in a hostile media market. The Daily Tar Heel, the much-lauded student paper at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, stopped accepting student fees in 1993. But by the time it became financially independent, The Daily Tar Heel had had a full-time, non-student general manager overseeing business affairs for decades.
Other papers are catching up: Virginia Tech’s Educational Media Company, which manages Virginia Tech’s student media outlets, posted a job notice for a full-time “advertising adviser” just over a week ago.
Student publications that have small endowments — or, as in our case, no endowment whatsoever — live and die by the advertisements they sell. We hope that a professional ads manager will help boost our partnerships with local and national businesses that could benefit from advertising with us. These business relationships help us do what we love — publish articles and images for you to learn from and enjoy.
We are grateful to The Cavalier Daily Alumni Association for helping us make this crucial hire. And we are equally grateful to you, our readers, for sticking with us all the while.
Read More
LETTER: Medical students stand in support of transgender youth
By Rachel Rezabek , Russell Hawes , Ishaan Rischie , Elianna Dunster , Kaile Maske , Zain Ahmad and Zoe Ziff | 16 hours agoAs future physicians, we cannot remain silent, especially since U.Va. Health is one of the most comprehensive gender health centers in the country.
HUYNH: The Supreme Court must support civil rights litigation in Virginia and beyond
By Viet Huynh | 21 hours agoThe Supreme Court must prioritize protecting the litigating power of the people against potentially tyrannical laws by their government.
EDITORIAL: U.Va. Health lets fear trump its mission to do no harm
By Editorial Board | YesterdayIt is high time to resist these authoritative and dangerous actions before there are no federal avenues left for resistance.
