UNASKED QUESTIONS (ANOTHER IN A SERIES)

posted by James Reel

Yesterday, UApresents issued a press release crowing that the campus impresario has ended the fiscal year about $90,000 ahead and with more than $1 million in advance ticket sales for next season. The press release is duly re-written with a couple of new quotes in the Arizona Daily Star this morning. But what neither the press release nor the rewrite told us is the state of the old deficit. A couple of years ago, the organization was a million dollars in the hole. Has the old debt been retired? Forgiven? Or does it still lurk there? It’s a simple question that should have been answered in the news story. And it would have been good to front-load the information that UApresents has been undertaking some severe cost-containment measures, including a reduction in attractions and periodic staff firings. Good newspapers are not merely conduits for image-polishing press releases.