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Thursday, March 28, 2024
The Eagle

The Talon might fold after financial instability

There may not be a Talon yearbook after October due to lackluster book sales. A history of poor sales is pushing the Student Media board to reconsider its viability as an organization.

“The best way to describe where The Talon is presently is to say it is in limbo,” Student Media co-chair Mike Wang said in an email.

Contracts for the yearbook are typically established in three year intervals, but The Talon’s poor sales record in 2014 resulted in a possible contract renewal for only the 2014-2015 academic year. But the contract may not be signed. The Talon will decide if it will print this year in October after Kristie Chua, Photo Collective director, and Adell Crowe, Student Media assistant director, deliberate.

The Student Media Board will also weigh in, but the discussion has not started yet.

“We are waiting for a variety of things, including on Student Activities’ end, to go through before we begin the discussion in earnest,” Wang said.

The last five years have resulted in small sale numbers closer to 100 than the 300 books quota in the Talon’s contract. In 2013, 293 yearbooks were sold while 128 yearbooks were sold spring semester 2014.

“The Talon just hasn’t been selling on AU’s campus,” Chua said. “Our quota is around 300 book that we have to sell every year, which isn’t really much of the student population at all, and we haven’t consistently reached that quota.”

Sales usually offset the approximately $10,000 costs for yearbooks, but the lack of sales caused the Talon to have to find a way to cover the remaining debt.

Waning student interest is seen as one of the reasons AU’s yearbook has not been able to meet yearly quotas.

“I just think it isn’t really relevant on college campuses,” Chua said.

The Talon’s problems are indicative of a national decline in University yearbook sales, according to Chua. The University of Virginia recently stopped printing its yearbook.

“Around the nation college yearbooks are just dying out,” Chua said.

Chua listed the $80 price per book, inability to capture everyone’s picture and the dwindling practice of taking senior photos as a few of the reasons students have not purchased books. Chua also mentioned that she was not aware AU had a yearbook until joining The Talon as the Photo Collective director.

Changes in The Talon’s executive board have also made it difficult for the yearbook to start strong this year.

Over the summer, the former managing editor and editor-in-chief both lost financial aid support and were not able to continue at AU, according to Chua. This left both positions vacant beginning in late-July and early-August. Finding new leaders for both positions has been difficult.

“Any organization in a situation as difficult as The Talon’s would find itself in a similar situation,” Wang said. “Kristie Chua has been following very diligently, but it naturally has been a tough sell to prospective editors-in-chief.”

The Talon turned to the Student Media Board for extra funds, but the process has also been a “tough sell” for the yearbook, according to Wang.

“While it is unclear whether it is due to waning student interest in owning a yearbook or to other factors, it is clear that Student Media Board’s budget cannot support The Talon as a permanent arrangement,” Wang said.

Inability to support The Talon has left the yearbook abandoned. Various solutions to The Talon’s problems are being discussed this semester.

Converting the yearbook to an online publication is one of the main ideas being examined, but is unlikely due to difficult social media promotion, Wang said.

Senior portraits will still be available to students, but will be given to individuals for their distribution among family members instead of being used by the University. Senior portraits have been on a steady decline for the past three years with 582 pictures taken in 2012 and 280 taken in 2014.

One of the most promising solutions to The Talon’s troubles is that the Photo Collective becomes the primary way for student life to be documented throughout the year.

The Photo Collective currently serves as a division of The Talon, but if the publication dissolves it will become its own organization under the Student Media Board, decided by student media leaders.

“The Photo Collective would stay, given how enthusiastic student response has been to the Photo Collective,” Wang said. “Not only has Photo Collective’s work consistently attracted wide praise by students, but [its] photographers have been in high demand since [its] beginning.”

Positions with the Photo Collective have received strong interest from the student body this year, according to Wang.

“Adell and I are kind of looking for it to quit printing so we can kind of focus our attention on the Photo Collective and expand it instead of trying for one more year and seeing what happens,” Chua said.

jsmith@theeagleonline.com


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