After a long, grueling campaign to stave off financial ruin, The University of Pennsylvania’s historied newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian has run out of money.
The newspaper desperately grasped for life after almost running going broke a few months ago. They ended up raising over $19,000 in a few weeks, mostly because everyone just wanted to stop getting school-wide emails about it. However, due to some poor (i.e, really cool) financial decisions by The DP’s upper management, the newspaper is now completely out of money. We reached out to a few members of the organization to find out what happened.
“When we saw how much we raised, we knew we needed to celebrate,” Alex Moneybags, a newspaper veteran, said. “The first thing we did was upgrade our office space. We now have hardwood floors, a fireplace and a huge statue of our editor-in-chief in the middle of the office. Really, it’s more of a palace than an office now. I’m so grateful that everyone’s money was used to benefit us and only us.”
We also reached out to the organizations finance directory, Sammy Dollars, a junior embezzlement major in Wharton.
“Well we saw how it worked for The Triangle and we were inspired. All it takes to get rich is a little begging apparently. And, I mean, it’s really sad to see that we’ve run out of funds again. After I took, I mean, after we ran out of money the first time, we all worked really hard to get back to a good place financially. It’s a real shame that I did it, I mean, that it happened again.”
An emergency press conference was called to address the situation. Arriving atop a purebred white stallion, the editor-in-chief of the paper, gave a public statement.
“I am sad to announce that The DP has run out of money,” he said. “We are looking into what happened and how we blew $19,000 in three weeks. We can assure you all that it definitely has nothing to do with the waterslide in our office or the gold ‘We Did It!’ rings that we bought everyone on the staff. It probably has something to do with the student body; you all should have given us more money.”
The DP plans to run another donation campaign to try to revive their recently deceased paper. Their campaign, the Week of Begging II: We’re Really Sorry We Wasted All Your Money, will start at the beginning of spring term and continue indefinitely. Instead of limiting themselves to online donations, The DP will send the freshmen members of its staff to the street to beg for money. If you see some new street urchins roaming around campus, give them a dollar or two, since they’ll probably take it from your pocket anyway.
The Rectangle will continue to cover this story until the DP can revive itself. And while we continue to cover breaking stories and exciting news, we will keep true to our long-standing motto: Don’t Waste $19,000 in Three Weeks.