The Minnesota Daily formally announced Wednesday that the newspaper’s Arts and Entertainment section will be discontinued in its current form.
Today’s edition of A&E is the last weekly version of the publication. Daily officials plan to have a one-page-per-day addition to the normal paper up and running by mid-November.
The decision was made by the Daily’s Office of the Publisher, which includes the editor-in-chief Julia Grant, Board of Directors president Kevin Nicholson and business manager Sam Rosen.
Members of the A&E staff reacted to the news with shock and frustration.
“This decision deprives students of a rare opportunity to write art journalism within what had been one of the most sophisticated university cultural critiques available,” said A&E editor Laura Czarnecki.
But Grant said the change will put A&E “in an environment where it can reach readers every day as well as make the paper a more well-rounded publication.”
Nicholson said no one factor led to the change; it was a composite decision after looking at finances, content, space and other factors.
“As a result of this decision, we’re putting better content in the paper and we’re doing that for the readers,” Nicholson added.
The A&E staff was not consulted in the decision, Czarnecki said. “The oddest part is that the mass-firing of the staff was justified in the name of ‘fairness to all.'”
An Arts and Entertainment publication has existed in some form at the Daily for more than 30 years. But Grant said it has never been static.
— Erin Ghere