We’ve been reporting on The Red & Black Publisher Harry Montevideo’s salary as part of our coverage of the walk-out by student editors earlier this week. His salary offers context into how the paper is doing financially, as well as giving insight into how the paper is being operated by its independently incorporated board of directors. (Montevideo’s an ex officio member of the board, meaning he doesn’t vote on this matter or others.)
We’ve reported the salary the board reported to the IRS on its Form 990 for the fiscal year that ended May 31, 2011. That’s the most recent report available, and says that Montevideo was paid $189,545 in both salary and other compensation.
Saturday morning in a post on an alumni Facebook group, Montevideo announced that at the board’s last meeting in early August, he offered to take a pay cut that brings his base salary to $90,000.
“In light of declining revenues over the past five years, I felt this was prudent and fair to both parties,” Montevideo said in the post. “It is aligned with what others in similar college media operations, with similar length of service are being paid.”
Montevideo also wrote that the salaries reported to the IRS for the 2008, 2009 and 2010 fiscal years don’t reflect what he was actually paid in those years due to delays in compensation.
His new $90,000 base salary is comparable with those paid to general managers or publishers who run some of the nation’s other independent student newspapers.
For context, here’s what a few other papers paid their top executives in salary and additional compensation, current as of their most recent IRS Form 990 filings:
- The Daily Bruin, $130,238
- The Daily Iowan, $122,253
- The Daily Pennsylvanian, $96,798
- The Daily Northwestern, $84,500
- The Daily Tar Heel, $89,559
- The Diamondback, $261,256
- The Independent Florida Alligator, $67,226
Editor’s note, Aug. 19: We’ve removed the names of the general managers at each paper that were listed in the original report. That information is available on the Form 990s we linked to, for those who are interested in more details.