Editor’s note: The Daily’s editorial department acknowledges that this article is premised on a conflict of interest. This article is a special feature for Commencement 2025 that does not represent the Daily’s standard journalistic practices.
Graduating senior Sam Berman began his journey in the Daily as business director for the fall 2022 semester and continued leading the Daily’s business department for the rest of his sophomore year. He then went on to be an alumni liaison in fall 2023 alongside Ty Blitstein (LA’24) and a social committee chair in spring 2024 with Megan Amero (LA’24) and graduating senior Siya Bhanshali.
There are several things that business directors do to ensure the Daily can maintain its financial independence from the university.
“I had to work a lot with ad outreach and speaking to all different types of vendors and figuring out the optimal plans for each vendor, the optimal advertising plans. … The business director is communicating a lot with a lot of different types of people under different types of timelines, and they often have different tasks,” Berman said.
Tufts University, and the Daily, were emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic when Berman was the Daily’s business director. Revenue had dried up for the Daily, preventing staff from completing desired projects.
“COVID decreased [the Daily’s] ad revenue, and the finances were a bit unclear. Things were disorganized. We were a bit unsure where we stood financially, and we had to make a lot of decisions to help the Daily accumulate revenue,” he said.
One of Berman’s first acts as business director was to change the amount of papers the Daily was printing. This was in line with many mainstream newspapers and college newspapers across the nation that were reducing their printing due to a decline in readership.
“We changed from printing twice a week to once a week, and we had our print editions a bit longer in terms of page count, which saved us some money,” he said.
Berman also looked to increase ad revenue, looking to other student publications for inspiration.
“I also did a lot of research from some of our peer publications to see where we could set our ad prices that we sell,” he said. “Ad revenue is one of our two main revenue streams — we advertised heavily for our other prominent revenue stream, which is Giving Tuesday and donations.”
Berman sought to reorganize a stronger business team that had come and gone in the past. The goal was to increase productivity and gain more ideas and perspectives for the Business section. Additionally, he looked to improve the operations of the department.
“Some other things I did was just create, organize and get our areas that we work in [set up], like our Google Drive system. We really organized that. I created a thorough budget, a thorough to-do list.”
Berman wanted to make all expenses have a purpose and move the Daily forward financially.
“Another thing was being smart with our money, taking every potential expense into account and deciding whether or not we can afford it, and, if we can afford it: How would it benefit the Daily?” he said.
Berman shared some advice that he gained after a full year on the managing board as business director.
“Come into the position with an optimistic mindset and come in with the attitude of wanting to learn and just to do well — I think those are the most successful business directors,” he said.
He also shared insight into the benefits of working on cohesive managing boards.
“It just allows people to share ideas freely. I’ve been in situations or teams before where I would have some really good ideas, but I’d keep them to myself because I wasn’t comfortable enough,” he said. “But working with these collaborative teams allowed me to share ideas freely and allowed others to share ideas. And the more ideas you have, the more options you have, and the more possibilities … to improve the Daily.”
He reflected on how much he had to learn about managing finances when stepping into this role, but also how he determined he was to ensure that the Daily as a business could increase revenue and work as a team.
“Even though I didn’t have much experience, I came into it wanting to not only do well for myself, but for the team, and that encouraged me to conduct research on our competitors, or to figure out how else we can earn revenue and increase profits,” he said.
Reflecting on his time in the Daily, Berman said he has grown a lot, particularly from when he was business director.
“It was my best experience I’ve had throughout my four years at the Daily. I made some really great friendships that I’ll have forever,” he said. “I grew, too, as a leader. I gained a lot of leadership skills in communication and leading teams, and public speaking and speaking to all different types of people.”
One of his fondest memories working in the Daily was when the newspaper hit its revenue goal.
“I also will always just remember from both semesters as business director, once we hit our revenue target, and I knew we’d break even, at least,” he said. “Those were really rewarding experiences because I came into the club not knowing much about the Daily. I never knew how to run a business. So it proved to me that hard work can pay off.”
