A four-word editorial — containing an infamous four-letter expletive and an attack on President Bush — has cost Colorado State University’s student-run newspaper an estimated $30,000 in advertising revenue, the Fort Collins Coloradoan reported.

The editorial, in The Rocky Mountain Collegian on Friday, read “Taser this … F-     BUSH,” with the vulgarity spelled out. It ran on the same day as an article about free speech in relation to a University of Florida incident in which the campus police used a Taser stun gun to subdue a student protester at a political speech.

The Collegian’s editor, J. David McSwane, said the decision to run the editorial had been approved by a split vote of the paper’s seven-member editorial board. He told The Denver Post he didn’t know how much money the paper had lost but confirmed that some advertisers had withdrawn and that some salaries, including his own, would be cut. The student publication receives no money from the university and depends entirely on advertising revenue.

In a statement posted on the student paper’s Web site after the editorial ran, Mr. McSwane said the editors’ intentions “were not to cause harm, but rather to reinforce the importance of free speech.”

Colorado State’s president, Larry Edward Penley, also issued a written statement on Friday, saying he was disappointed in the editorial decision. Mr. Penley emphasized that the university had no authority to censor or regulate the paper’s content and suggested that concerned readers contact Mr. McSwane and “the Board of Student Communications, which hires and, if necessary, removes student editors from office.” —Charles Huckabee