The Orlando Sentinel is discontinuing its participation in the UCF student readership program, after negotiations of pricing with the Student Government Association fell through.
SGA president Logan Berkowitz said during a Senate meeting Thursday that all Orlando Sentinel boxes would be removed from campus.
The readership program, provided through the SGA, is a way to allow UCF students free access to different newspapers around campus. Those papers, until recently, were the Orlando Sentinel, The New York Times, and USA Today.
USA Today is owned by the Gannett Company Inc., the same company that owns the Future.
The readership service is paid for by a minimal fee charged to UCF students at the beginning of each semester. UCF is charged 40 cents for The New York Times and USA Today each, and 17 cents for the Orlando Sentinel.
However, relations between the SGA and the Orlando Sentinel turned sour when the latter requested a 23-cent increase at the beginning of the current academic year. SGA refused the deal, and with the Sentinel offering no chance for bartering, both parties decided to end the service.
"They've been part of this program for years at 17 cents," Berkowitz said, "but I won't allow the Sentinel to force our students to have to pay extra."
Although the Sentinel has a smaller circulation than USA Today, it costs just as much at the news stands, with The New York Times running at a higher price than both of them.
It was with that in mind that the Sentinel requested a fee increase for the distribution of their publication.
"We were requesting the same 40-cent-per-copy price that The New York Times and USA Today receive," Lisa Jacobsen, human resources spokeswoman for the Orlando Sentinel said, "and the UCF SGA had declined that request. We had a good working relationship with the university, but we do have the same costs to cover as some of the larger papers, and 17 cents just wasn't profitable."
For the time being, UCF will only offer the USA Today and The New York Times as a part of the student readership program.
Since many journalism and political science courses require students to have copies of the Orlando Sentinel for class, those students may now have to pay 75 cents to get the newspaper.
Both the SGA and the Orlando Sentinel hope to reconcile the disagreement soon and bring the local city paper back to the campus student readership program.
"They've been in discussion for some time now," Jacobsen said, "and we definitely hope to bring it back if we can come to an agreement on the price."?
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