On April 18, 2007, GSG President Laura Moore sent the following letter to the Board of Directors of Maryland Media, Inc., the company which owns the Diamondback, the University of Maryland's "student" newspaper. Letter in .pdf format here. Text of the letter follows:

April 18, 2007

Dear Members of the Maryland Media Board of Directors,

I write to you today on behalf of the 10,000 graduate students at the University of Maryland, College Park, to express our concern and disappointment over the coverage of the Diamondback newspaper. While it remains the only paper of record on campus with wide circulation and regular publication, the Diamondback’s editorial philosophy does not serve a major portion of the population. Despite the fact that many graduate students are regular readers of the paper – and consumers of campus and related news in general – there is rarely any coverage of issues that concern graduate student life at College Park.

I have raised this concern repeatedly in the past with the editorial staff of the Diamondback and have received only the highly unsatisfactory explanation that readership surveys from some years ago suggested graduate students do not read the paper on a regular basis. As of yet I have been unable to obtain these surveys and continue to have concerns about their accuracy, scope and methodology. Based on personal experience I would be amazed if this were the case since most of the graduate students I know do in fact read the paper on a regular basis. Furthermore, I would suggest that there is a fundamental cause and effect dilemma here – which came first, the suggested lack of graduate readership or the lack of coverage interesting to graduates?

Maintaining an editorial policy that marginalizes around one third of the potential student readership on campus (to say nothing of faculty and staff) seems outrageous to myself and my colleagues in graduate student leadership. It also seems like a poor business decision on the part of the paper’s management since graduate students are a potentially lucrative advertising market for many products and services.

As the parent company of the Diamondback and the ultimate management authority, we strongly urge you to take the interests of your entire readership into consideration. We value the editorial independence of a student run newspaper, however, we have failed to achieve any noticeable response to our concerns through that avenue.

Thank you for your attention, I would be happy to discuss this issue with you further at your convenience. If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me directly at 301.314.8630 or lauracat@umd.edu. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Laura C. Moore
President
Graduate Student Government

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