Yes on PRESS

The Guardian’s recent budget crisis has called its survival into question. To ensure longevity without sacrificing independence, The Guardian’s current Editorial Board is pursuing a Student Fee referendum to sustain its funding in the long-term. The fee is called P.R.E.S.S., which stands for Protect our Right to Express Student Stories and is modeled after analogous fees at the other UC campuses. It is on YOUR ballot from April 7-11 on Tritonlink and all eligible undergraduate and graduate students are able to vote. Join us in saving The UCSD Guardian and vote Yes on PRESS!

You can visit our Reddit AMA to ask us about PRESS and see what your fellow Tritons are wondering about.

Interested in helping more? Send an email to [email protected] to learn how you can contribute to the PRESS campaign. 

What is P.R.E.S.S.?

P.R.E.S.S. (Protect our Right to Express Student Stories) is a proposed quarterly student fee of $3.50 per student to fund the operations and longevity of The UCSD Guardian, UCSD’s official award-winning independent newspaper by students for students. On the Spring ballot, all undergraduate and graduate students will have the opportunity to vote on the implementation of this fee beginning in Fall 2025. If passed…

Guaranteed Use of Funds

1. 71% of collected fee will be used exclusively for programs and services outlined in the referendum:
   1. Maintaining free distribution and access to our digital and print work by:
   2. Supporting around-the-clock, on-the-ground coverage of student-interest happenings
   3. Compensating our editors appropriately
   4. Covering the cost of digital and print operations
2. Long-term advancement and expansion projects to increase professionalism and quality:
   1. Reinstate a staff and/or faculty advisor for mentorship and administrative longevity and support business staff salary
   2. Host pre-professional journalism and media networking events
   3. Provide expansion opportunities in the following sectors: Long-term investigative projects, Multimedia storytelling, Internship programming, Staff and leadership expansion, Training and development
3. 29% of this fee revenue will be directed to the Financial Aid & Scholarship Office to be awarded based on student need, as required for all student fee referendums.

Fund Allocation

The Guardian will manage the collected funds from the PRESS fee through our student-led Editorial Board.

1. The Editorial Board is led by The Guardian’s student-elected editor-in-chief and managing editor, who will have final discretion on the composition and management of the Editorial Board with one regulation: students shall be the only voting members on the Editorial Board. If applicable, any professional staff at The Guardian can be consulted to offer advisory support only.
2. The Board’s mission is to act and advise in the best interests of The Guardian as a news organization in public service to the UCSD student body. 
   1. The current Editorial Board is non-hierarchical, composed of individual editors who have volunteered to serve in this extra capacity.

Disclosure commitment: The Guardian’s Editorial Board will publish a projected budget breakdown online at ucsdguardian.org to maintain transparency at the beginning of each fiscal year. As with the rest of The Guardian’s work, student feedback and engagement is welcome and encouraged.

 

Why a referendum? Why now?

1. The degradation of free press across the globe is of dire concern. 
2. As free press has decreased, information and news has been sensationalized for entertainment. In order to fund themselves, many media outlets have traded in transparent, ethical, and accessible reporting.
3. The Guardian refuses to compromise on its core values. A funding structure reliant on advertising is increasingly inconsistent in this digital age. 
   1. Current expenses
      1. Labor: Editorial staff of 25+ students
      2. Operations:
         1. Printing
         2. Online platforms
         3. Rent
   2.  Proposed expenses
      1. Labor: Increasing editorial staff stipends and potential return to general staff commissions 
      2. Operations:
         1. Investigative and large-scale project resources (transportation, multimedia equipment, etc.)
         2. Pre-professional programming
         3. Printing
         4. Online platforms
      3.  Equipment:
         1. Office maintenance
         2. Reportage materials
4. This lack of long-term funding infrastructure has already resulted in significant cuts. It may soon further result in: decreased scope of coverage, paywalled work, mass staffing layoffs.
5. At UCSD, The Guardian is the first line of defense to maintain independent and local student journalism.
6. UCSD does not have a formal academic journalism program, making The Guardian the largest pre-professional resource on campus to build and refine the journalistic skillset.
7. The Guardian reaches thousands of regular readers across campus and online. In the 2024-25 academic year, it has distributed over 15,000 print issues, amassed over 200K website views, and accrued a total following of over 12,000 across social media platforms.
8. On a petition in support of student press rights and the survival of independent student journalism at UCSD, The Guardian received over 1000 signatures in under 24 hours, including over 30 student and community organizations.
9. In order to maintain its independence and longevity, The Guardian is seeking a fee referendum, as a collectively funded budget aligns most closely with its by-student-for-student ethos. 
10. Referendums for student fees to fund journalism are instated across the majority of University of California institutions and others across the country, including UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Irvine, and UC Santa Cruz.

A referendum is a campus-wide vote on any student-proposed fee-initiatives that will introduce, renew, or increase compulsory student fees, such as P.R.E.S.S or the recent U-Pass & Student Transportation Fee. Other referendums at UCSD have included the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) & Student Mental Health Fee (2020) and the University Center Fee Increase (2015). 

PRESS is open for undergraduate and graduate student input and was approved to be on the ballot by the UCSD Associated Students (AS) Council, UCSD Graduate & Professional Student Association (GPSA), the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, and the Chancellor, as required for all referendum ballot measures. Like all referendums, it will pass if the number of students casting a vote exceeds 20% of all eligible voters, and a majority of voters approve the measure. 

As a student newspaper, The Guardian represents the UCSD student voice to the world in similar function to the campus newspapers at other higher education institutions. Student fee referendums to fund journalism and/or student media are instated across the majority of University of California institutions, including UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Irvine, and UC Santa Cruz, at costs of up to $6.00. At UCSD, this fee initiative will allow The Guardian to maintain its independence by receiving funding directly from the constituency it serves, without the oversight or intervention of student government, administration, or any other entity.

 

Who is The UCSD Guardian?

The UCSD Guardian is UC San Diego’s official award-winning, student-run independent newspaper. The Guardian is the only pre-professional journalism program at UCSD and the primary news source for the UCSD community and the San Diego public. Since 1967, The Guardian’s journalists have worked diligently to cover key events with timeliness, transparency, and quality. 

Who We Are

The Guardian is both the legacy paper at UCSD and the largest pre-professional journalism-related program on a campus without an academic journalism department. With thousands of readers online and in print, The Guardian has served the UCSD community in many ways, including:

• Reporting stories from a student perspective across six interdisciplinary journalism sections: News, Features, Opinion, Arts & Entertainment, Lifestyle, and Sports 
• Cultivating open and informed dialogue for undergraduate and graduate students to be heard and hear others discuss issues that matter to them 
• Recording archival situated community history by students for students in print and online that have been used in classes, art projects, multimedia presentations, zines, and more 
• Training thousands of student journalists who have used the skills learned at The Guardian for careers in and beyond journalism, including as lawyers, doctors, scientists, researchers, professors, and more

The Guardian has received dozens of awards from the California College Newspaper Association (CCMA), winning the “Newspaper General Excellence Category” multiple times. It has also been featured in local and national media outlets, including KPBS and ABC7, for its stellar reporting.

Structure

The Guardian is currently one of the only student-run campus departments left at UCSD, nestled under the Student Life division of Student Affairs. The organization is consequently subject to financial and bureaucratic oversight from the University, though it maintains complete editorial independence; The Guardian’s constitution includes a clause that ensures a mass resignation of student editors as a contingency if the University attempts to exert or encroach on editorial decision-making. 

Relevant History

The decision to become a campus department was made by editorial leadership in the early ‘90s in order to give the staff access to university resources relating to HR support and professional staff. As the news industry as a whole declines and The Guardian has been increasingly unable to fund itself, leadership has had to make more and more cuts. Since the early 2000s, The Guardian has been unable to employ any professional staff, who were previously responsible for ensuring knowledge was maintained during leadership transitions, handling advertising and business contracts, and managing The Guardian’s administrative structure with the University. The Guardian has maintained its editors on payroll, despite having to make larger and larger cuts to their stipends each year, but has been unable to pay any general staffers for decades. The Guardian currently spends around $1,500 biweekly on stipends distributed among 25 editors. Its entire current general staff is composed of volunteers.

Leadership

The Guardian’s editor in chief is elected internally every year by The Guardian staff, and the rest of editorial leadership is appointed by the EIC. Editorial leadership is responsible for managing all budgetary and advancement decisions related to The Guardian as an independent news organization, as well as liaising with university administration. 

Since the removal of professional staff from The Guardian’s structure, students have filled all management, advertising, and business roles and duties, with the exception of the Student Life Business Office representative responsible for overseeing The Guardian’s account by the University. The Guardian has no say in the selection of this individual, nor does it currently contribute to their salary.

Student leadership singlehandedly handles editorial decision-making and production of the newspaper. As students, staff turnover is frequent with graduation, but all leadership throughout The Guardian’s history is imbued with its mission of accessibility, ethicality, and truth to ensure that student stories are told with nuance, weight, context, and empathy.

Referendum and Funding History

The Guardian was previously part of a fee referendum for all student media, which sustained its funding for a decade. For external reasons, that referendum was removed. Other independent student media who relied on this referendum funding (KSDT and TTV included) then pursued funding opportunities through allocations from Associated Students. The Guardian, concerned about the encroachment of student government on editorial decision-making, elected to adopt an advertising-reliant funding structure, which has only grown more inconsistent. Last summer, the administration informed The Guardian’s leadership that our deficit has become untenable and that the Student Life division would no longer support The Guardian financially. 

In Print and Online

The Guardian prides itself on maintaining free access to its work for all, serving the student body directly but also representing the student voice to the UCSD-external community. Originally established as a daily print paper called The Triton Times, The Guardian has been forced to decrease publishing frequency incrementally over its history to its now once-a-week schedule. Full archives of The Guardian can be found in the UCSD Library database. 

Amid the declining news industry and the increasingly isolating digital divide, The Guardian editorial leadership of recent years has prioritized expanding its digital and online presence while still working to maintain the print issue under the belief that this will maximize accessibility to its work. Print papers are its traditional form, as physical media removes barriers to access for locals disconnected from the internet and is the highest mode of maintaining accountability for the newspaper’s coverage with permanence. For example, while anyone with the correct skillset could change or remove anything on The Guardian’s online platforms without officially issuing a correction, a regular print maintains the system of public accountability and reader feedback by forcing full transparency from The Guardian’s editors in cases of mistakes, misprints, or anything else; though it is against The Guardian’s ethics to hide any mistakes made in coverage, declining trust in the news industry has made print a continued priority for The Guardian as it intends to demonstrate its commitment to transparency and accessibility. 

The Guardian currently publishes every week and is in print every other week. Like all newspapers, The Guardian prints on recycled paper and is constantly pursuing strategies for defending physical media while reducing waste. It welcomes and encourages feedback from readers on how The Guardian should develop and innovate its storytelling; on the whole, leadership has seen a substantial voice that believes in print’s importance, but if this is not the direction or desire of the student body, leadership will adapt accordingly.

Referendum spending: the PRESS Initiative does not guarantee spending on any particular aspect of The Guardian. Besides paying the salary of one professional advisor and contributing to half the salary of its business manager, the initiative does not codify any other expenses, including print. This will allow flexibility for current leadership to allocate the budget in a way that makes the most sense each year; if The Guardian chooses to move away from a particular operational tradition, such as printing, this initiative will not prevent that shift.

Get Involved

The Guardian recruits every quarter, and this Spring is no different! We recognize that the student voice is constantly changing, growing, amalgamating, and we want to tell every possible story. If you’re interested in joining, apply here, and come to our events to learn more! Our programming calendar over the next two weeks for PRESS and recruitment can be found on our website and @ucsdguardian on Instagram.