Editor’s note: The Daily’s editorial department acknowledges that this article is premised on a conflict of interest. This article is a special feature for Daily Week that does not represent the Daily’s standard journalistic practices.
In the spring of 1988, then-Tufts students Jonathan Larsen (LA’88) and Julie Beglin (LA’89) set up a meeting with the Tufts Community Union Senate, determined to achieve one objective: making The Tufts Daily no longer reliant on funding from the university. Nearly four decades later, the Daily continues to be financially independent as a result of the tireless work of its staff. Why did the Daily put so much effort into becoming financially independent at the time, and how does it remain independent today?
When the Daily was founded in 1980, it received funding from TCU like any other club at Tufts. However, it soon became evident that the Daily could not fairly and impartially cover stories on TCU and the university as a whole while relying on them for financial stability. Larsen, who was the editor-in-chief of the Daily in the spring of 1988, recalls that, at that time, the Daily was reaching a point of financial stability to be able to consider breaking away from TCU.
“[The business manager at the time] told me that the Daily was now taking in enough revenue that we didn’t need [TCU’s] money anymore. We weren’t actually using whatever they might have allocated for us. And so at that point, it was my sentiment that, … if we weren’t getting funding from them, then whatever strings were attached to funding no longer applied,” he said.
Julie Beglin, who was editor-in-chief of the Daily in the fall of 1988, recalls the challenges that arose during the paper’s initial separation from TCU. “I do remember being in a meeting with some TCU senators and Jonathan [Larsen] and getting grief from them about our plans. We thought they were boneheads, so them looking down on us just put more fire in our bellies to make this work,” she wrote in a statement to the Daily.
Initially, the Daily established financial independence by selling print ads.
“Our business manager at the time was all over getting as many ads as possible so we could reach independence. He may have stopped going to class. He spent his time running all over Medford, Somerville and Boston getting us ads,” Beglin wrote.
Today, the Daily’s primary method of generating revenue remains the same. Selling advertisements, both in print and online, comprises the majority of the Daily’s funding. Sophomore Alex Dai heads the Daily’s business department, whose job is to ensure that the paper remains financially healthy and sustainable.
“We have different tasks spread out between members. We have our assistant business directors and ad managers, and they do work like reaching out to clients,” he said. “My role [is] more administrative tasks, including having meetings regularly and making updates to our [managing] board members regularly, and also managing the overall accounts.”
The other main source of revenue comes from alumni donations, largely organized by The Tufts Daily Alumni Council. The council, made up of about a dozen Daily alumni, was founded in 2021 to “support current and former staff of The Tufts Daily by providing guidance, support, fundraising assistance, and networking opportunities,” according to the Tufts website. The Daily’s alumni liaisons serve as a bridge between the newspaper and the council, working closely with the council on various projects including fundraising, panel events and the Daily’s Support Fund Stipend program.
Ad revenue and donations are essential to the operations of the Daily, as the paper has several large expenses that it must cover every semester. The first is printing costs, a substantial expense since each print edition of the Daily costs around $750 to produce.
Additionally, the Daily pays its employees who are eligible for compensation, which includes paper distributors and executive board members who are on work-study. The Daily also offers three stipends each semester through the Support Fund Stipend program, two for $400 and one for $600, that are awarded to active members of the Daily with financial need. Dai estimates the total budget for the payrolls sent out to students each semester to be around $6,000.
Fundraising and alumni support is crucial in allowing financial programs such as stipends and work study to continue. In 2023, the Daily Alumni Council worked in partnership with the Daily to raise $36,000 in the paper’s first major capital campaign, which broke all previous fundraising records.
Every Giving Tuesday since this fundraising campaign, the Daily has initiated a smaller push to fund operational expenses and support ad sales. Senior Marlee Stout, an alumni liaison as well as former associate editor and executive copy editor for the Daily, plays a large role in coordinating the Daily’s Giving Tuesday initiative.
“We work with [the Daily Alumni Council] … to set a goal, like, ‘How much money are we trying to raise?’ and then set a narrative around what that money is going to be used for so people have a concrete [idea] so that they’re not just sending money into the abyss,” she said. “We’re using this to buy cameras, or we’re using this to print our newspaper, or pay [for] our website,” she said.
Meanwhile, as business director, Dai oversees communication with clients who purchase ad spots in both the printed and online version of the newspaper.
“For our business department, to keep a really balanced budget and to keep our financial health of our organization, I think that it is really crucial for us to maintain our client relationship and really engage and communicate actively with our clients to ensure that they want to advertise with us,” he said.
For Dai, this means ensuring that clients are aware of the Daily’s widespread outreach, which includes 750+ printed editions of the Daily every week, 30 distribution locations around campus and locally and over 100,000 monthly visitors to the newspaper’s website. When purchasing ads, clients are given the option as to whether their ad is presented in a print edition, on the website, in a newsletter or through social media. The ad’s format, in addition to other factors such as its size and whether or not clients choose to purchase a custom design, all influence its overall cost.
Stout maintains the importance of the Daily remaining financially independent.
“Obviously we still cover TCU, and I think it’s still important that we are independent from them so that we can cover them honestly and accurately, and then separately, also cover the university without being constrained by any sort of financial obligation,” she said.
Beglin agreed, calling the paper’s financial independence “critically important.”
“How can a newspaper fully cover the Tufts administration and TCU Senate while being reliant on them for funding?” she wrote.
For Larsen, there was never any doubt that financial independence was the way forward.
“The idea that that legislative body [that we were covering] would also have oversight on us is noxious from an inherent journalistic point of view. That’s a very terrible system,” he said. “We [at the Daily] were so under-resourced and so stretched thin as human beings, let alone as an institution, that we were sort of incorruptible, because we’d already decided [to be financially independent].”
In the fall of 1988, Beglin took over as editor-in-chief. While she completely supported the decision for the Daily to gain financial independence, she stated that her main role in taking over operations was to continue making the best newspaper possible.
“My direction was to try to have the best news, features, arts, sports and opinion sections this little pirate ship of barely-adults could manage,” she wrote. “[Financial independence] was absolutely the right decision, and my role was to keep the momentum going.”
37 years later, the Daily continues to be financially independent as a result of the efforts of its staff from both past and present. Today, Tufts is the smallest college in the country to offer an independent student-run newspaper. With the continued support of both the Tufts and local communities, the Daily looks towards being able to maintain its independence for years to come.
