Letter: ​Why the DTH didn’t print on a snow day

TO THE EDITOR:

It’s disappointing to watch The Daily Tar Heel editor abandon accuracy and fairness, conduct a lengthy Twitter tantrum and make the DTH its own top story over a financial decision not to deliver printed newspapers to what will be a largely empty campus on Friday Jan. 22.

By eliding key facts and failing to report the other side, the editor spins a single­-source story of crusading student journalists fighting the man.

In this story, she strongly implies that The Daily Tar Heel was being pressured into shutting down, taking a snow day and not reporting and publishing the news.

Not true. The DTH’s journalists were fully expected to report and to publish.

They have 24/7 access to the newsroom as well as digital publishing from anywhere on the web. The editor was given almost 36 hours notice to put a Plan B in place to serve readers as we closely watched the forecast models.

This is exactly what I said on Wednesday in a meeting with the editor: “This is an opportunity to innovate on your digital and social platforms, while meeting DTH readers where they will be on Friday: ­home, online.”

The Daily Tar Heel took brutal financial beatings delivering printed papers during every snow and ice event and every cancelled class day UNC had in 2014 and 2015. We are talking losses on the magnitude of $10,000.

Some of these events put DTH delivery drivers (on a voluntary basis) on dangerously icy roads.

What did we accomplish?

Despite rallying cries of “The paper will get delivered,” (circulation manager), and “The DTH doesn’t get snow days,” (me, general manager), most of those papers were hauled back for recycling.

Almost no one was on campus to pick them up. Oh, and students complained plenty about producing those papers.

Tallying the breathtaking losses after three days without classes and paid advertising last year, I decided this pointless, expensive and dangerous practice would stop.

That’s the other side. Here are two fact checks on the editor’s emotional but factually challenged video:

What would it cost to print “just a few thousand papers” to hand out on campus? Not too much less than it costs to print a full run for a full campus.

A small run costs vastly more per paper because the cost of plating pages and staffing the press is the same.

Could the paper have been picked up from Durham early, “before midnight?”

No.

Even if the DTH is ready at 5 p.m., the press schedule is full. The DTH’s slot on that schedule starts after midnight. Even if changing the DTH’s printing time was possible, what would be the point of delivering papers ahead of a storm that starts at 7 a.m.?

This is the full story of why the DTH won’t be delivering a printed paper when we know in advance that the majority of students, faculty and staff won’t be able to ­or allowed to ­arrive on campus in the morning during dangerous weather conditions.

Indeed, the DTH will never get snow days. That has been my policy for two years and it has not changed.

But you will get snow days.

And when that happens you deserve to get ongoing, online coverage of UNC, historic traffic jams, Tar Heel snowmen and the status of local supermarket shelves instead of trumped up, navel-gazing sob stories about oppressed student journalists prevented from passing out tons of newsprint to first years who are in their dorms, snuggled up watching Netflix and reading the news on their phones.

Kelly Wolff

General Manager

The Daily Tar Heel