Maintaining a quality staff

Maintaining a large, dependable staff is very important to maintaining the quality of the IDS and there is almost never a time when the paper turns away students who want to write. Given that there are thousands of students at IU and hundreds in the journalism school alone, why is it that the IDS never seems to have as many writers as it wants?\nPossibly the largest barrier to attracting students is the pay. During the summer, students get paid $8 for an article or column and $10 for a front page article. Writing an article usually requires hours of research and writing, making the actual hourly rate fall considerably below minimum wage. The IDS could maintain a smaller staff and pay those staffers more, but it feels that having a much larger staff of underpaid students leads to a more exciting and diverse newspaper, and I agree. Also, by providing experience to anyone who is willing to work, the paper provides a valuable service to students that balances the lack of pay. \nUnder the current system, the IDS puts advertisements in the newspaper and on bulletin boards around campus for open houses to which all students are invited. Interested writers then fill out an application, indicating which desks they're interested in working for. Then, they come to an orientation and are introduced to their desk editor(s) for assignments. During the school year, there is a general assignments editor that works with new writers to get them accustomed to the newspaper and an editor usually goes to introductory journalism classes to encourage people to come write for the paper.\nEven when the IDS finds a new writer, it is often a struggle to keep them. Writers and photographers are expected to be self-motivated and thus many staffers simply drift away, not having the experience or discipline to perform independently with a deadline, or they discover that they cannot afford to continue working due to the low pay. There is some effort being put into improving staff retention already. Beth Moellers, the Assistant Editorial Adviser, prepared an anonymous survey that was distributed to applicants that no longer work at the IDS to examine why they left and what can be done to increase retention in the future. Once all of these surveys have been received, the results will be tabulated and improvements will be made.\nTo improve the existing system of recruitment, I feel that the individual desk editors should be more responsible for recruiting writers for their sections. For example, rather than focusing exclusively on journalism students, an editor could speak at general writing classes such as freshman English and Professional Writing Skills. Also, the arts, design and photography editors can speak to classes in the School of Fine Arts, the sports editor at the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, and the world editor can speak at political science and international studies classes. \nRyan Gunterman, Editor in Chief, would ideally like to hire someone whose sole responsibility is to recruit and maintain the staff of the newspaper, but this is unlikely to happen as it would be yet another financial burden on a paper that already cannot afford to pay its writers well. By instead making editors responsible for recruiting and following up with writers, the same result could be achieved. There are some editors that work hard at recruiting people to work at their desk, but there is much more that could be done.\nIf you have any suggestions on how to improve this or any part of the newspaper, please contact me at letters@indiana.edu; Re: Ombudsman.