Just a week before the election, the newest wrinkle to funding campus blogs has hit a snag.
Issues arose last month surrounding what entrants were allowed for Voter Funded Media (VFM), an initiative that gives money to campus blogs and publications that report on the AMS.
For the last three years, the AMS has given funding to VFMs that were ranked highest by voters for their election coverage. This year however, the AMS planned to fund VFMs throughout the year, instead of just during the elections period.
“When I…took this job, I asked [2010 EA Isabel Ferreras], what is something from your legacy that you would like to see happen, and she said continuous VFM,” MacKinnon said. “It [was] priority number one until the election campaign.”
The AMS began funding continuous VFM in October, but stopped last month after controversy arose around Black Box Theatre, an anonymous blog that leaked a confidential legal opinion on the controversy surrounding the $700 donation from the Social Justice Centre to Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. Because there were no proper guidelines in code for who was eligible for continuous VFM, AMS Council suspended it until further notice.
“The fact that we don’t have any rules is a huge problem for that part of the contest,” he said.
“I wasn’t very happy about that, I don’t like that at all. It sucks that we have voter media that are doing the work that they promised to do for us and we’re not turning around and scratching their back in the way that we promised to do to them.”
Despite the lack of continuous VFM, the AMS will still be funding VFM for the election period, and may funnel some of the money meant for continuous to the elections.
Taylor Loren, an editor for the VFM blog AMS Confidential, said she has been disappointed by the AMS’s suspension of continuous VFM money.
“The main thing that continuous VFM does is it allows incentive for new blogs to develop and write about AMS elections,” she said. “They’ve eliminated any of [the money] for continuous while decreasing the reward [for elections], so from my perspective I don’t see why any new blogs would be writing anything.”
She also believes that the AMS should have dealt with the issue at the last council meeting before the break.
“AMS Council pretty much shut this issue down because they all wanted to go home, when I don’t think they really realized what they were doing,” said Loren.
“Campaigns start on the 10th and the next council meeting isn’t even until the 12th.”
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