Geoff Lister/The Ubyssey

Voter-Funded Media (VFM) is set to return, but it’ll be back with funding cuts and a short roster of blogs as the deadline for applications arrives on Friday.

The contest is funded through the AMS elections budget and distributes money to competing blogs writing about the election. Students registered to vote in the elections can also vote to divide the money amongst the blogs.

In past years, $8000 was set aside for the VFM. In 2011, $6000 was devoted to funding blogs continuously throughout the year, rather than just during elections. But this year, the funding will be limited to $1000, to be split among all the contestants.

According to AMS elections administrator Carolee Changfoot, the reason for the reduction is to see if it changes involvement in the contest.

“For the former years, it was a lot of money…and it would often go down to the same blogs repeatedly…It just wasn’t money people were engaging with as much,” she said. “What the executive wanted to see next year is maybe if we could get more engagement coming out from…more of UBC than the same blogs over and over.”

But Changfoot says there are no new candidates yet. “That’s why we’re still trying to get the blog squad people to be interested,” she said.

In her search for candidates, VFM coordinator Amy Chan has contacted the UBC Blogsquad, a community of first- and second-year students hosted through the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology.

“Last year we had a lot of people coming out of the woodwork, a lot of new blogs, because there was so much funding,” said Kai Green, who co-founded the VFM blog AMS Confidential in 2009. “This year, nominations aren’t even in yet, VFM forms aren’t due, but I don’t think you’ll see as many people because of that funding cut.”

“The benefit of putting more time in is now less,” said Mark Latham, who initiated the VFM program in 2006 and runs the website votermedia.org. “With less money in the contest, it’s a little harder to get peoples’ attention.”

Neal Yonson, an editor for the UBC Insiders blog, agrees, but notes that money isn’t everything. “Having money available for independent media I would say is useful to convince people to start one up. But if they want to keep going, it’s because they want to—not because of the money,” he said.

Green, who was The Ubyssey‘s copy editor in 2010-11 and is dating AMS President Jeremy McElroy, said funding was useful in getting more contributors. “There was definitely a financial incentive there, but I don’t know if that was our only motivation,” she said. “It does encourage outlets and media other than your standard Ubyssey.”

Another barrier to involvement, said Latham, is how close the VFM deadline is to the elections. “Each year I advise the AMS…that they should start it sooner. They shouldn’t wait till January, it’s kind of short notice.”

Changfoot agreed, though she had a late start to the job herself. “My year is a bit of a special case, because I was really recruited a lot later. It’s been a bit tight with the timeline, so I don’t think we’ve been able to promote it as much as we would have liked.”

Yonson said the system has suffered from the lack of a full-time administrator after Latham handed the program back to the AMS. “For the last little while, you know, Mark Latham hasn’t been really hands-on like he was at the beginning,” he said. “Without that person who’s actually keeping an eye on it, it’s easy for it to slip through the cracks.”

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