Well, it’s been a wild year at Arthur, we can tell you that much. Never could we have dreamed that we’d be subject to a defunding campaign, only a year after having successfully mustered support for our non-refundable levy fee to be increased to a whopping… $12.89. A fortune, truly.

That this campaign first and foremost rested upon a disinformation campaign pertaining to our administrative and editorial policies—not to mention unrepentant attacks on our personal character—proved the cherry atop the proverbial cake. Still, as they say in our industry, if somebody’s mad at you, you’re probably doing something right!

It’s our hope that you, the staff collective, are content with the stewardship thus far provided by the inimitable Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay, and that you’d further not be opposed to the addition of another set of hands to his editorship—or, say, two.

Our editorial platform is rooted in a decisive, pentagonal approach. We intend to rework the paper’s staffing plan in order to maximize the efficiency of all positions and ensure that student money is being spent responsibly and sustainably; overhaul the Arthur masthead both from a visual and creative perspective to allow for every possible means of expression to shine through our paper while accentuating community connections, and finally; we hope to make the Arthur office as accessible and useful as possible for all staff members, community members, and volunteers as a welcoming space where they can come collaborate and participate in the process of creating a meaningful impact in the student and municipal community.

1. REWORK THE STAFFING PLAN

Volume 57 brought along with it a number of changes to the way Arthur hired and employed its staff, and it’s our aim to improve upon the designs already in place to best suit the future of the masthead.

The most obvious change is a reimagining of the editorial structure. Running Arthur is no small feat and we need an editorial team that reflects that. We propose implementing a three-editor structure, essentially splitting the workload handled by one of the customary full-time positions between two part-time positions which each maintain full editorial privileges. The editor-in-chief would work 30 hrs/week and would oversee day-to-day operations and be regularly available during the workweek. The Coordinating Editors would each work 15 hrs/week and be responsible for managing a portfolio tailored towards their editorial focus, such as liaising with staff, editing the print issue, or hosting training and professional development sessions. All three editors would equally be able to respond to communications, update the website, proofread articles, and execute tasks as needed on the fly.

We feel this is advantageous as it provides an opportunity for students to directly lead and engage with an organization of which they are members, and to which they pay into. While Editors have historically maintained a close relationship with the Trent community and are overwhelmingly Trent alumni, offering part-time editorial positions enables students a greater opportunity to run the paper which represents them. It also sets the Arthur up for greater continuity year-to-year as graduating students with previous editorial and management experience are better equipped to take on either full-time editorial duties, or serve on the Board as staff collective members. 

Additionally, we intend to streamline the existing Communications Coordinator and Copy Editor positions. With a return to the more traditional structure of print publication, we need to reconsider Arthur’s position and emphasize a multidisciplinary approach. The bulk of copy editing labour can be reasonably divided between three editors, as well as a portion of Communications and website work. Given the uncertainty of funding year-to-year we feel this is a prudent use of existing resources and will allow us to focus our hiring on staff writers to prioritize the production of journalistic and editorial content while editors take on the bulk of communications and copy-editing. 

Furthermore, we want to encourage experimentation and make Arthur a space to explore multimedia journalism. We want to hire at least one staff member as a photojournalist, and encourage all our staff to experiment with photojournalism, audio journalism, and videography.

Arthur lives and dies by those who toil for it, and few are thus more important than our staff. The biggest piece of import to our staffing plan is an increase in staff wages across the board. We believe, as undergraduate and postgraduate students ourselves, that students deserve fair compensation and as close to a living wage as possible in compensation for their hard work for our organization. 

Our staffing plan is fully and conservatively costed according to an understanding of student enrolment projection and our levy being indexed to CPI for the upcoming year. 

Under our editorship, Journalists would be paid $19.00/hr, each of the two co-editors would be paid $21.00/hr and the editor-in-chief would be paid $22.00/hr.  We intend to hire a minimum of four student journalists under our staffing plan assuming all external funding applications are unsuccessful. Additional positions are contingent on successfully being allocated TWSP/TI funded positions for the 2023/24 academic year up to a total of eight student journalists for a total of twelve staff members including Web Manager, Danny Taro at $19.00.  

2. OVERHAUL THE MASTHEAD

While the lifeblood of any masthead may be the staff it employs, it’s true that newspapers somewhat stake their reputation on what they actually put to the page. To this end, we want to consider just what Arthur’s role in the community needs be as we blaze determinedly into the future.

Arthur has long been a venue for arts & culture content, and we intend to emphasize that. While this year Arthur has maintained partnerships with ReFrame film festival and covered a number of the Anne Shirley Theatre Company’s shows, we want to pump up the masthead’s visual flair to reflect this association with the artistic and creative communities of Peterborough, even going so far as to possibly recommission a new masthead and logo. We will also encourage staff to express themselves creatively, both in their writing and other forms of expression, and put an emphasis on the visuality and oomph of the front page.

We will teach journalists how to write and produce journalism in a variety of forms (news, op-ed, editorial, audio, visual)  by actively encouraging our staff to engage with their community and conduct “on the ground” investigations and interviews during events through real-time interviews and follow-ups. We will provide students with resources and examples of journalistic production across these various forms and give meaningful edits with re-writes when necessary so staff can gain a better understanding of journalistic conventions and the editorial process involved at a newspaper.

Further, Editors will be able to afford instructional and development opportunities for journalists wanting to hone their skills in covering a particular beat. For example, staff writers interested in covering City Hall, the TCSA Board of Directors, the Trent Board of Governors or other such regular occurrences will be able to accompany senior writers and editors to see and learn firsthand how to cover these events effectively. 

We believe that our proposed team demonstrates a wide set of experiences writing, producing, and editing across the spectrum of journalist pursuits so that any staff member will have a chance to develop their skills covering and writing about a number of topics and beats. We are also confident that given our previous experiences, we are well equipped to manage and attend to staff and community member’s concerns while maintaining the integrity and vitality of Arthur both internally and in how the masthead presents to the public. 

Sebastian and Evan also want a blanket ban on listicles, because we are boomers at heart.

3. REINFORCE OUR  FINANCIAL STABILITY

Coming off of an attempted Levy defunding campaign (let's not mince words here, that is what it was) Arthur’s financial stability is more important now than ever was before. We want to secure our financial status so that Arthur operates in good standing for the duration of our tenure, and so it has a healthy budget when we inevitably hand it off to our successors.

We were able to draft our initial staffing plan using only our existing surplus, which means giving provisions for subsidies such as TWSP, TSWEP, CSJ and other programs and bursaries from which Arthur receives financial assistance, we stand to be very firmly in the black again this year.

Further, we plan to go in even harder on fundraising this coming year. Both of our fundraising events have proved huge successes, and experiments with distributing poster prints and stickers as thanks for donations have been met with positive reception. We want to host further fundraisers larger in their scope, as well as investigate the process of creating merchandise to not only generate a small amount of income but equally to further promote our image in the community at large. This will mean exploring amending our articles of incorporation in order to sell merchandise. 

4. BOLSTER OUR CONNECTIONS

As a longstanding pillar of the Ptbo/Nogo community, the oldest levy group at just two years younger than Trent itself, and a staple of the municipal news ecosystem and the national student press scene, Arthur already has considerable reputation and sway.

It’s our intent to cultivate that to our advantage as a masthead, and to further the endeavours and goals of our writers. 

We want to put together a proper delegation for CUP’s NASH 86 conference, and help our staff attend to the best of our abilities. Conferences like these provide an exceptional opportunity for networking and for professional development, and in many cases help prospective journalists get one foot in the industry for future pursuits. With forethought and a concerted fundraising effort, we wish to make NASH one of our specific goals for our fundraising and the duration of the publishing year.

This extends in turn to a desire to cultivate awards-winning journalism here on our masthead. NASH plays host to the annual John H.McDonald Student Journalism Awards, one of the highest honours for which student journalists are typically considered. We want to train journalists who are capable of producing awards-winning material, and help them get out to experience winning those awards in person, such that when they leave Arthur it’s with a strong resume, and industry connections.

As a paper deeply committed to anti-opressive and decolonial reporting, we are also in discussions with First People’s House of Learning to create a robust and locally focused set of training and reporting guides for Arthur in order to build on and strive to improve our reporting on local Indigenous communities, events, and issues. We recognize that we have a privileged place in the Ptbo/Nogo community as a learning environment for student journalists and that this carries with it a responsibility to ensure that our editorial practises are carried out in respectful and collaborative ways.

5. ACCESSIBILIZE THE ARTHUR OFFICE

The office is a space currently relegated to use by the editors for the most part, and even so proves an uncomfortable place to work upon occasion. Our intent is to revivify the office to make it accessible and welcoming to staff, so that it may act as a hub of sorts for Arthur operations for the duration of our tenure.

We plan on going to the Peterborough Re-Store and buying many pieces of old wood to be transformed into beautiful objects to sit on. We also plan to clean the carpet by hiring professional cleaners who have soaps and lotions for such a task.

As well as the outdated furniture, we’d like to replace much of Arthur’s outdated tech setup. Pagination had to be done on only one computer this year as a result of our existing iMac’s age. Bringing our technology into a contemporary, digital-centric environment is a priority of ours to get the most out of Arthur’s office space. Further, we want to make some quality-of-life improvements, such as replacing the (two) printers we currently have with a single one which can accomplish both printing and scanning (unlike our current setup). 

We intend to carry forward Arthur’s existing open-door policy, and are pursuing the possibility of revamping the seating area so that we can host our weekly story meetings in the office space.

Pending CSJ approval, we also plan on hiring an Archival Assistant over the summer who would help document and preserve Arthur’s 57-year archive, update the website archive, and help with remodelling of the office space.

“I’M NOT READING ALL THAT”

That’s totally fair! We get it, it’s a lot of words. If we had to boil down our platform to its essence it's about doing what’s best for the masthead. We all love Arthur, and we want to see this organization thrive during our tenure, and be confident that it will continue to do so when we pass it off.