Fulcrum (newspaper) - in The 21st Century

In The 21st Century

In 1999, after several years of a rocky relationship with the Ottawa Gaming Club (who occupied the first floor of 631 King Edward Ave.) The Fulcrum was granted the first and second floor of the building as their new offices (the basement was used as storage by the SFUO). It was also in 1999 that "The Fulcrum" began to make more use of digital technology, switching from more traditional layout techniques to computer layout, and switching over to digital photography, beginning with digital contributions by Steven Meece.

Beginning in the 2003-2004 school year, the paper began referring to itself as University of Ottawa's Fulcrum, rather than The Fulcrum, on the cover (although it is still commonly referred to as "the Fulcrum" by University of Ottawa students).

In the summer of 2004, recently elected Editor-in-Chief Mary Cummins and Managing Editor Marcus McCann once again looked into plans to become an autonomously incorporated organization. This push was spurred on by the SFUO attempting to pull the Summer 2004 issue of the Fulcrum for featuring a mug of beer and using the term "Frosh" (the SFUO had recently stopped using the term frosh in favour of welcome week and later 101 week due to negative connotations associated with the term). Aside from this, the separation was due to several reasons. The main reason being that the editorial board felt it was an inherent conflict of interest to be owned by the student government while attempting to write fair, unbiased, and often critical stories about them. The secondary reason was that as an autonomous corporation, the Fulcrum was able to directly control its own finances and spur further growth of the paper.

After discussing the situation with then-president of the SFUO Philippe Laliberté, plans were made to begin the process. In October 2004, a letters patent was granted to "The Fulcrum Publishing Society", the corporation that would take over the governance of the Fulcrum, and negotiations between the SFUO and the Fulcrum continued throughout the year. After approval by the SFUO's Board of Administration and many last minute changes to the contract, ownership of the Fulcrum officially transferred to The Fulcrum Publishing Society on June 1, 2005.

The Fulcrum Publishing society was set up to be governed by a ten-member Board of Directors made up of students, community members, Fulcrum staff, U of O faculty, and Fulcrum alumni. Ultimate responsibility for the governance and management of the Corporation was left with the board while the president, who acted as the Business Manager, made decisions on a day-to-day basis. To avoid a similar conflict of interest, provisions were put into the corporate bylaws prohibiting the board from interfering in editorial content unless faced with possible legal action.

After a turbulent first year, the Fulcrum settled into a financially stable position as an autonomous corporation.

Recent changes to the governance structures of the Corporation have led to slight changes, such as the Business (now General) Manager no longer being permitted to hold a seat on the Board, and the roles of the Corporation's executives being clarified.