Free fall

Boston University's independent student newspaper, the Daily Free Press, lost a lawsuit and could face bankruptcy. What went wrong?

On Campus by Jason Gay

The bags under Gene Johnson's blue eyes are bigger and darker than the bags under a 21-year-old's eyes should be. For much of the past two months, Johnson, the editor of the Daily Free Press, has been charged not only with running Boston University's independent student newspaper, but also with steering it through a costly discrimination lawsuit brought by a former employee. Johnson is putting in 12-hour days on top of a full class schedule, going to bed at three or four in the morning. "It gets frustrating," he says.

The fate of the Daily Free Press has been a hot topic both on and off BU's campus this semester. Known on campus as "the Freep," the paper has been a lively independent voice at the school for more than 28 years, as well as a training camp for professional journalists such as Charles A. Radin of the Boston Globe, who founded the publication; Globe business columnist Joan Vennochi; and New York Times reporter Don Van Natta Jr. It has also been the proverbial thorn in the side of university administrators, most notably former president John Silber, now BU's chancellor and the president of the state board of education.

From time to time, however, the Freep's business decisions have caused more trouble than its editorial pages. Four years ago, the paper fired its office manager, Karen Miranda, who had been stricken with cervical cancer. Though the paper's editors argued that Miranda's firing had nothing to do with her health condition -- they say it was based on poor performance -- a Suffolk County jury disagreed last month, awarding Miranda $163,000 in compensatory damages. Interest and attorneys' fees may bring the Freep's tab closer to $300,000.

The jury's verdict, which is still subject to a judge's approval, has put the student paper in serious financial straits. The Free Press intends to appeal, but if it loses, it may be forced to declare bankruptcy. That may allow the paper to reorganize and survive, but a shutdown isn't out of the question yet. And that's a front-page story that is keeping Gene Johnson awake many nights. "The lawsuit made us realize how poorly the business of the Free Press was being run," he says.

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The Free Press made its debut in May 1970, two days after the shootings at Kent State. BU, like colleges and universities around the country, was in turmoil in the wake of the killings. Though the Freep wasn't scheduled to begin publication until the following semester, Charles Radin and his colleagues decided to jump-start the project amid the chaos.

"We reported on the local protests and the closing of school -- finals were canceled that year," Radin recalls. "There was a lot of stuff that students really needed to know about. So we thought it was the right way to get the thing started."

From the start, the Freep stressed its independence from the BU administration. The paper's staff, which was culled mostly from two previous student publications, the News Advocate & Logos and the B.U. News (which Radin calls the school's "radical chic journal"), made all the editorial and business decisions. There was no faculty adviser, and the paper didn't accept any financial support from the university.

Not that BU was itching to bankroll the Free Press. Shortly after the paper's founding, Silber arrived from the University of Texas at Austin to become BU's new president. An aggressive education reformer whose ambition was to transform BU into a world-class university, the temperamental and indisputably original Silber was a student editor's fondest fantasy. As both the university's and Silber's own stature grew, clashes between the president and Freep staffers were not infrequent. In one memorable jab, the Freep declined to endorse Silber as a gubernatorial candidate in the 1990 Democratic primary, backing rival Frank Bellotti instead.

"Silber probably had a salutary effect on student journalism at BU in the same way that Nixon had a salutary affect on American journalism in general," says Radin.

The relationship between the Free Press and Silber's successor as president, Jon Westling, has been mostly civil, save for some dustups over the university's controversial decision last year to terminate the football program. Colin Riley, a BU public-relations associate who is usually the intermediary between student reporters and the president's office, attributes that improvement to better, more accurate reporting. "Their ability to practice good journalism with consistency hasn't always been the case," says Riley, who complains that Silber was often "misrepresented" by the Freep.

Satisfying university administrators, however, has never been the Freep's goal. For three decades, supporters say, the paper has served as an important independent voice -- a daily filter between the student body and the university powers that be. "There's no other way to find out what's going on in the school other than the Free Press," says senior Leslie Robarge, a journalism major who has occasionally worked for the Freep. "The only other thing is the Bridge, which is basically a PR rag." (The BU Bridge is a weekly paper published by the university with professional staffers.)

But the Free Press's greatest asset -- its independence -- may also be its biggest liability. For years, the paper's decision-making responsibilities have been entrusted to a board of trustees composed of the paper's editorial and business editors and chaired by the editor-in-chief, who serves as the paper's president. This group has generally succeeded in putting out a solid editorial product, but the fact remains that a $450,000-a-year business is essentially being run by a group of undergraduates working without a net. "We take [our responsibilities] very seriously, but the meetings, depending upon what we're talking about, can be pretty lighthearted," admits Gene Johnson.

Another challenge for the Freep -- as for many college newspapers -- is the difficulty of achieving continuity when all the paper's leaders are students. The efficiency of the publication can vary widely from year to year, depending on the talents of the individual editors.

"What's unique about this business is that it's a nonprofit that keeps changing as a matter of irretrievable inertia," says the Free Press's new attorney, Shepard Davidson, who was hired just three weeks ago.

All these issues played a role in last month's trial. Though the paper's editors blasted Karen Miranda's discrimination charges -- "We did nothing wrong," says the Free Press's business manager at the time, Jill Rubin, who testified for the defense and is now a pagination supervisor at the Chicago Sun-Times -- the jury concluded that the paper's former office manager, who was not a BU student, had been wronged.

"While they may be very good journalists, I don't think they were very good businesspeople," says Miranda's attorney, Ken Homsey. The Freep's editor in 1994, Ed Brennan, now the sports editor at the Waltham News Tribune, stands by the decision to fire Miranda but acknowledges that the newspaper's "lack of continuity affects things."

Though the Free Press plans to appeal the jury's decision, there is little question that the verdict puts the paper in a vulnerable position. Johnson says the paper currently has only $75,000 in cash; a foul-up with a new advertising accounting system has prevented the paper from billing its September accounts receivable. (Davidson says that if the Freep loses its appeal in court, bankruptcy is a possibility, though it's unlikely "in the next month or so.")

In the meantime, however, the Free Press is attempting to correct some of its shortcomings, particularly on the business side. One idea under consideration is an "alumni board" to advise the student editors on major decisions. Radin, who has agreed to serve on such a board but hopes it won't inhibit the students, also suggests a procedure for regular performance reviews of salaried employees.

Gene Johnson says that since the jury verdict, the atmosphere at the Free Press has changed. While the staff still has fun putting the paper together, he says, there is a new commitment to being well organized. "We're trying to keep better records, keep more accurate minutes, improve our filing system, and make sure we're following our bylaws," he says. "Before the lawsuit, we'd look at the bylaws maybe once and then put them in a corner to collect dust."

It would be understandable if Johnson were bitter at being forced to pilot the paper through a storm he had no hand in creating. But Johnson -- the son of Quincy Patriot Ledger city editor Ken Johnson, a Freep editor himself in 1975 -- figures he's getting the kind of education he'd never get in a journalism classroom. "These decisions that we're making are important and can really affect people," he says. "It's kind of neat that we're learning about these things, even if the situation that we're learning it in isn't ideal."

One outcome that Johnson emphatically rules out is having the Free Press turn over any of its authority to the BU administration -- or look to the school for a handout. Ranald MacDonald, chairman of the BU journalism department, says that it's important for the Freep to be "totally separate" from the school. "It can't be under university control," MacDonald says. "That's the whole concept of it."

Gene Johnson, showing a backbone befitting a veteran newspaper editor, agrees.

"They [the administration] are certainly not going to offer anything unless we ask, and we don't intend to ask," he says. "We want to stay independent. If BU bails us out, it creates a weird ethical situation -- we don't want to be beholden in any way to BU."

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.