Students Should Not Be Paying for Journalists Vanity Project

Running a profitable broadcasting company of any kind is very challenging and is not getting any easier.  The advent of streaming services along with satellite radio and the ability to call up all kinds of entertainment including the Beach Boys greatest hits from your cell phone or full length video episodes of television programs, documentaries and movies is making it even more difficult.

Add to that the ability for anyone to self-publish news to the internet including blogs and video files at very little cost and now journalism is challenged to be relevant like never before.  Newspapers in print form are dying, cable news is losing viewership and so is local news as the options for the public at free or little cost proliferate.

In this atmosphere the idea that a local college district should be subsidizing a television and radio vanity-project is absurd.

Chancellor Jose F. Torres was right when he stated in a report to the board that “Preparing those students (for life and careers) is the primary goal of the San Bernardino Community College District…”  In other words if the San Bernardino Community College District is to be saddled with a 1.2 million dollar deficit every year at least the students should get something out of it which right now they don’t.

If it is a student-subsidized station and operation, which it is, it should be run and operated by students with oversight from faculty.  It should not be staffed by retired professional journalists who are using the facilities for free to stay in the limelight in the twilight of their careers.  This way the people that are paying for the operations, the students, are learning how to do essential skills that will serve them in the future whether they in front of the microphone or camera or are behind it.