COLUMN: Business manager passes torch of renewed `Thresher'

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by George Hatoun

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This job -- the chief financial officer of the monetarily largest student organization -- has been by far the most rewarding experience of my Rice career to date.

It has been a wonderfully enriching year and a half, albeit also extremely frustrating and disheartening at points. I've learned a tremendous amount about running a small business and have had the opportunity to apply that knowledge immediately and actually grow from my mistakes and triumphs during my tenure.

When I took over in April of 1994, the Thresher was surviving, but a slowly and steadily growing debt was looming. At the time, we had a deficit of over $25,000 in our internal university accounts -- money that the Thresher owed Rice but could not pay. While there was never truly a concern about Rice "calling in" our debt and closing down the Thresher , that is something that was always in the back of my mind.

The real question, however, was: How can we continue to fulfill our role as the university's watchdog while we remain financially indebted to Rice?

Clearly we could not. So eliminating the debt became the top priority. I examined the nature of our money problems and took several actions: I raised advertising rates, rewrote our credit policy, redesigned our invoices and billing software and embarked on an aggressive subscriptions campaign to counter our cash flow problems.

To make a long story short, the Thresher is no longer in debt, and we've been able to afford substantial capital improvements in the last 12 months. And at present, over 10 percent of Rice parents subscribe to the Thresher , perhaps the highest rate at any university of our size.

The business department has expanded from a staff of two to five -- and while more staff means more payroll expenses, the efforts of this year's business staff will produce a projected increase of $45,000 in revenue over the staff of just two years prior.

That is not to say that the Thresher has solved all of its problems. In the business department, we still have to address improving our debt collection, refining our credit policies, handling transitions better and attracting qualified business and advertising manager candidates.

The editorial side of the paper -- to which I belong now -- is not perfect either. There are a number of events which must happen if we want to be considered a more serious publication. In news, we must improve the accuracy and timeliness of our reporting. Opinion should strive for more captivating columnists and should adopt a policy of editing rambling letters for length and clarity; A&E and sports need to continue to re-examine and try to broaden the target audiences of their articles.

Further, the Backpage and the Trasher must be eliminated in their current forms. There may have been a time when those features were acceptable on this campus, but like Campanile -sponsored beauty pageants and the Rice chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, that time has come, gone and is now long past. As the flagship publication of a world-class institution, we must avoid even the appearance of impropriety and insensitivity in our pages, not to mention the loss of credibility and ultimately readership.

Despite these problems -- which are minor in the scheme of our nearly 80-year history -- I am truly proud of the paper and its vibrant staff. If there were just one thing that the Thresher had the upper hand in, it would be the quality and dedication of its writers and editors. Because of that, and because there is so much more to do -- that we can do -- that we will do, I can say unequivocally that the best of The Rice Thresher is yet to come.

This is both a very happy and a sad occasion for me. It is happy because I can be proud of a job well done, and because after 18 months of hard work, my successor will be able learn from what I have done and build much greater things from it.

This is a sad occasion because in a way I'll miss a job which I have grown to feel comfortable doing. I feel as Jim Baker must have felt when he stepped down as Secretary of State in the twilight days of the Bush administration to manage George Bush's presidential campaign. He must have realized that he was leaving behind one of the best and most rewarding jobs in the world. That's how I feel.

I'll simply conclude by thanking a few of the many great people who have helped me thoughout my term. Drew Bagley, our extremely competent advertising manager and Assistant Business Manager Sujata Mody, along with Ads Production Manager Nina Olien and many others, have done and will continue to do tremendous jobs. I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for your hard work and ideas, but most of all for just being there.

To borrow from former Thresher columnist Jym Schwartz, tempora bona volvant and don't forget from whence we came.

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the October 6, 1995 issue.

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