Michael Gartner, former president of NBC News, editor and part owner of the Ames Daily Tribune, told a class of Iowa State journalism students that the university administration sees campus newspapers not as a “source of information, but as a potential trash problem.”

The Campus Reader, a weekly supplement published by the Ames Daily Tribune, is currently embroiled in legal battles with ISU over such issues as campus distribution, copy rights and the status of the Iowa State Daily as a student-run organization.

“We tried to use the name Iowa State Reader and the university said that we couldn’t, that it was a trademark name. Then we tried to use a picture of the Campanile and got a threatening letter about the fact that the Campanile is an ISU trademark,” Gartner said.

Gartner also talked about how the Campus Reader was having trouble distributing on campus.

“The Daily can go in like 120 places on campus and we can only go on 35. The university views newspapers, any newspapers, not as a source of information, but as a potential trash problem,” he said.

Gartner and the Tribune have threatened to file an unfair competition lawsuit against Iowa State, but no action has yet been taken.

Gartner had said he was not trying to hurt the Daily and in fact loved it, but he did have a problem with its status as a student-run organization and specifically with its Government of the Student Body funding when the paper is already turning a profit.

“The Daily received $90,000 from the GSB last year even though it turned a profit of $200,000,” Gartner said.

Gartner said the profit may be going into a war chest for the future, adding that he did not see why an organization that makes a profit requires student funding.

Janette Antisdel, general manager of the Iowa State Daily, had a different view on the status of the Daily as a non-profit organization.

“Profit is money leaving a company. Anything we make goes right back into the Daily. Computers, digital cameras, color pictures, all those things cost a lot of money,” she said.

Antisdel also said some of the money goes into a savings account for the Daily.

“For most of the late 1980s into the early ’90s the Daily was losing between $20,000 to $30,000 a year, and in fact in 1991-92 we had to decide if the Daily was going to go bankrupt. You have to have a savings account ready for times like that,” she said.

Antisdel said she believes most profit-oriented organizations would not purchase the equipment nor employ the staff that the Daily does.

“A for-profit organization of our size would not go out and buy two digital cameras, but our mission is to educate students so they can go out and be better journalists and work in Michael’s newsrooms or at other newspapers,” Antisdel said.

Antisdel also said she has “nothing personal” against Gartner or The Campus Reader and “thinks they do have good intentions.”

There is, however, an open records lawsuit against Antisdel and the Daily filed by the Tribune.

Gartner also questioned the status of the Iowa State Daily as a university organization, and not a business, by mentioning the fact that the Daily employs nine people full time.

The Campus Reader employs the equivalent of “six to seven people full time and a whole passel of part-time employees,” he said. The Reader also uses the resources of the Tribune, including the accounting department, but it is “a business, not a university organization.”

Gartner’s career in journalism includes time as an editor at both the Wall Street Journal and Des Moines Register and as President of the Des Moines Register and Tribune company. Gartner has also been a general news executive for Gannet and USA Today, and the president of NBC News.