In a move applauded by the student press, UNL Chancellor-elect Ronnie Green announced a slew of plans for UNL in his April 6 acceptance speech.
Among the changes, a boosted budget for campus’ favorite media outlet, The DailyER, was proposed.
Per his remarks, he sees the paper as a vital, useful news outlet. However, he said the repetition of lame Runza and Husker football jokes is a problem, but not an unfixable one.
“I know they’ve got some good, new jokes in them,” Green said. “I think a bigger budget will help them really tap into their potential, which ultimately helps campus.”
After Green failed to provide an exact amount by which to increase the DailyER’s budget, he answered an audience question with “Oh, I don’t know, maybe like 3,000 percent.”
Green said an increased DailyER budget will ultimately pay for itself in reduced campus medical costs, explaining that “Laughter is, after all, the best medicine.”
This impromptu decision was met with almost unanimous approval.
Although The DailyER is not quite sure what to do with a nearly $200,000 yearly budget, senior staff accepted the funds without any questions asked.
“This is by far the most supportive move that the campus administration has ever made towards our paper,” said DailyER Editor-in-Chief Anders Prescott. “We made a lot of great jokes about Harvey [Perlman], but this new guy is definitely off-limits.”
However, staff is divided on how to use the money. Some floated the idea of buying office space in the Haymarket. Others suggested investing in a joke-writing machine or just using the money to pay for staff writers’ tuition.
Of these options, Green said he was partial to an automated joke-writing system.
“We certainly wouldn’t want The DailyER to leave campus,” Green said. “Self-writing jokes would be great. We wouldn’t even need to pay the writers.”
The DailyER’s treasurer noted that with that kind of budget, they could afford to pay for more than 100 articles every day for an entire year.
He said they could definitely focus on something besides content.
“Maybe we could get a private DailyER Pepsi machine,” said staff writer Pete Lawson. “That’d be sick.”
