A Better Outlook From the Hilltop

Over the summer, the Hilltop office at Howard University underwent some changes. The student newspaper's computer software was upgraded. The pastel blue walls were painted white. A black, faux-leather couch replaced one that wore the stains of ink-stained hands and late-night snacks.

"A lot of people sleep here," said faculty adviser and journalism professor Yanick Rice Lamb while sitting on the new sofa.

But the most significant change is that the Hilltop, "The Daily Student Voice of Howard University," once again is coming out Monday through Friday.

The country's only daily newspaper at a historically black university, faced with expenses it could not meet, stopped printing in the spring and struggled to get a few issues out on the Web.

Now, with additional funding from the university and donations from faculty and alumni, the balance sheet is healthy again. And a fresh mix of student newshounds is on a mission, said Editor in Chief Vanessa Rozier, "to prove we can do this right."

The first issue of the school year came out Aug. 25. One week later, on Labor Day, 15 writers and editors assembled to critique their work. How far should the photographer's name be from the caption? Does the student association president go by Nick or Nicholas, and why is there no consistency in the paper? Can you believe it, Oprah's name was misspelled in that story?

As frustrating as these questions are for staff members looking to put out a flawless paper, they are minor compared with the concerns raised at a meeting six months earlier. On March 26, the policy board that oversees the Hilltop -- a mix of students, faculty and administrators -- chose to stop printing the newspaper for the remainder of the school year.

The Hilltop has not been immune to the decline in advertising revenue affecting the newspaper industry at large. Although a portion of the Hilltop's approximately $250,000 budget comes from student fees, advertising is its chief revenue source to pay for the printing of 7,000 copies daily and small salaries for the student journalists. Ad revenue has been falling for several years.

Poor fiscal management was the heart of the problem, however. The Hilltop was suffering from debt carried from previous years and lost revenue from advertisers who never were billed. It owed $48,000 to its printer, the Washington Times.

"The paper was defunct," said Rozier, a 21-year-old journalism major from Milford, Conn., who was appointed editor in chief this year.

It was a low point in the story of newspaper rich with history.

The Hilltop was founded in 1924 by, among others, Zora Neale Hurston, who later wrote the novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God." From 1930 to 1991, the newspaper was published weekly, then twice weekly off and on through 2005, when it went to five days a week. It consistently has been ranked one of the best college newspapers in the country by the Princeton Review, taking the top spot twice, and can claim Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson as a former editor in chief.