The Medium, UTM’s campus newspaper, passed its recently held levy referendum seeking additional funding. Voting lasted from February 11–13, and the unofficial results of the vote were announced on Monday — with 43 votes in favour, 36 against, and seven abstentions. The Medium was established in 1973 following the collapse of UTM’s first campus newspaper, The Erindalian.
Three goals were identified as justifications for the proposed levy increase, including gaining a more equitable salary for staff members, increasing opportunities for journalists, and increasing funding for the annual magazine.
As a levy-collecting student society, The Medium’s budget is funded through a combination of a student levy and advertisements. In the 2018–2019 school year, The Medium received $3.63 from full-time students and $1.21 from part-time students at UTM during the fall and winter semesters through incidental fees. During the fall semester, this fee payment depended on whether students opted in to pay, in accordance with the recently struck down Student Choice Initiative from the provincial government. The Medium has received the same level of incidental fee funding since the 2002–2003 school year.
According to the Managing Editor of The Medium, Paula Cho, salary increases would be made to match Ontario’s minimum wage, which increased to $14 per hour in 2018.
New opportunities for journalists would include “networking events, panels, and seminars with professional journalists and editors across the industry,” according to Cho. Past events have included a half-day journalism conference run by the newspaper editors and Mehreen Shahid and Vanessa Gillis of The Sheridan Sun and Robert Price of the Professional Writing Department at UTM, which aimed to teach the basics of journalism to attendees.
The levy increases would also increase funding to The Medium Magazine, which is released once a year. The magazine includes long-form opinion pieces, personal essays, photography, and more. Cho explained that the funding increase would “provide more opportunities for students to write, edit, photograph, and illustrate.”
Editor’s Note (February 24, 6:06 pm): The article was updated to include the unofficial referendum results.
