The Daily Emerald’s publisher, Kellee Weinhold, has resigned, according to a press release the newspaper’s board sent out Friday.

The publisher is the one who runs the business side of the paper. For the background on the creation of this position, probably the best place to go is the blog that the Emerald’s staff, when I was a part of it, kept up while it was on strike two years ago. Here’s the article I wrote last summer when Weinhold was hired.

The press release says she has gone on to a new job at LivingSocial, which you may know from its somewhat grating Facebook aps (redundant?).

I feel the obligation to, as someone who might be expected to have a perspective on such things, say a few words about her tenure. I also feel the obligation, as probably the only person who will end up reporting on this, to keep my opinions out of it. Here’s a middle-of-the-road option:

In the bluntest terms, the position of publisher exists to stop the Emerald from bleeding money, which (it is no secret) is what it and just about every other advertising-funded print newspaper in the country have been doing. In that regard, Kellee’s record is mixed.

Not having anticipated that I would be writing this post three months later, I didn’t take note of the exact parameters of the Emerald’s financial situation at the last Emerald Board meeting I attended, on my last day as a staffer. However, what I do remember is that the Emerald is still losing money. Weinhold did make changes that curtailed some of that: the Emerald sold more ads, cut back its office space, and (this is something about which my feelings are colored by my own personal relationships) she reduced payroll, with all the unpleasantness that suggests. I recall thinking that less money was lost than in the preceding year.

Whether enough money was saved to recoup Weinhold’s salary, I am unable to deduce, but I think one speaking from my perspective cannot conclusively say whether she failed or succeeded in that regard.

Who knows what will happen next with the business side of the Emerald. Weinhold ran the advertising office, so someone’s going to have to start doing that. Fortunately for the Emerald (I am obliged by posting on the Commentator site to say, ‘and the rest of campus’), there will not be another paper published until the beginning of fall term, which leaves them as much time as possible to find a replacement.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 14th, 2010 at 15:36 by Alex Tomchak Scott and is filed under Ol' Dirty Emerald. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.