WPRB, Nass finalize deal

On Feb. 19, WPRB corporate treasurer Sean Murphy ’94 called Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Thomas Dunne to request the transfer of funds to the Nass’ student group account to pay off the magazine’s debt. This finalized a deal that required more than six months of negotiations between the two organizations.

As part of the agreement, WPRB paid $7,000 to the Nass’ student account and also paid off the Nass’ debt to The Princeton Packet, which totaled $6,000, WPRB station manager Edwin W. Bennett ’11 said. Printing the Nass will cost tens of thousands of dollars each year, Bennett said.

“We now run the Nassau Weekly,” president of the WPRB board of trustees William Rosenblatt ’83 said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ The Nass’ staff now reports to Bennett, and the Nass’ assets have been transferred to WPRB, Rosenblatt explained.

WPRB has also taken over the Nass’ business operations and will run advertisements in all of the publication’s issues, both groups confirmed.

Asked whether WPRB acquired the Nass, Rosenbalt said cheerfully, “We would put it that way.”

WPRB will not attempt to control the direction of the Nass, though. The Nass will not change its name, and “as far as we’ve discussed [with WPRB], there’s no reason for the Nass to alter any of its content,” Chaney said.

“We’ve given Justine, Charlie [Straut ’10] and Jac [Mullen ’10] a free hand to do what they want to do,” Bennett said, referring to the Nass’ three editors-in-chief.

“They’re great writers, and we’re quite good at running a business,” he added. “We’re happy to help run the publication.”

Bennett said the merger will also be beneficial for WPRB. He cited several “obvious advantages” of the deal for the station. The connection will afford WPRB broader visibility on campus, a new recruitment outlet for the radio station and new content.

Nass writers will record interviews with guests and read pieces from the magazine on the radio station, Chaney said.

“It’ll be nice to be able to get our writers’ work out there. They work so hard, and they deserve to have wide reception,” she explained.

Though the deal was not finalized until this month, the negotiations were mostly completed last semester under the leadership of former WPRB station manager William Sullivan ’09, former WPRB news director Sebastian Jones ’09 and the Nass’ then-editors-in-chief, Colin Pfeiffer ’09, Max Maduka ’09 and Chris Schlegel ’09.

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The Nass’ previous editors began these negotiations because they “recognized the financial problems that the Nass has been having for years,” Chaney explained.

In an effort to solicit donations to pay for the operational costs needed to continue regular publication, Nass editors offered sharpie tattoos, pizza runs, haircuts and more to students at a “Save the Nass” pledge drive at Terrace Club on Feb. 7. Under the new agreement, such fundraising efforts are no longer necessary.

Jones pitched the idea to the WPRB board of trustees as a way to expand the station’s visibility, Rosenblatt said.

Once the station’s trustees approved the agreement, Rosenblatt said he moved into the final stages of discussions with Dunne.

Dunne, who helped broker the deal, said that he did consider himself to be a negotiator for the Nass.

“I participated in the discussions because [the deal] involved two student groups. Even if the Nassau Weekly had a trustee board, I still would have been involved in the same manner,” Dunne said in an interview.

“Our office is responsible for financial record keeping, event registration, and advisement of all registered undergraduate student organizations,” he explained in an e-mail.

Though WPRB has a student group account with the University and has received University funding in the past, Rosenblatt said, “WPRB is not a traditional student activity in that [it is] not University funded.”

Dunne declined to discuss the University’s specific financial relationships with student groups, but he characterized the deal as a merger rather than an acquisition.

Bennett described it differently. “We acquired them; we didn’t merge with them,” he said. Once the station cleared the Nass’ debt, “the University essentially gave us the Nass for free.”