Professional journalists educated at Indiana University are reacting to changes made at the Media School this week. They have cited concerns about censorship, decried what they see as weakened support for journalism education and expressed recognition for the significant role the Indiana Daily Student holds for students.
Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush was fired Tuesday. Rodenbush said he refused to intervene in deciding what news student editors would put in a Homecoming-related print edition of the newspaper.
Hours later, Media School Dean David Tolchinsky announced the university would eliminate the Indiana Daily Student’s print editions the day before its next edition was set to go out.
IDS Editors-in-Chief Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller described such decisions as censorship.
The IU Student Publications Alumni Association Board issued a statement expressing their concerns of censorship from the Media School and university. The board stressed its goals of supporting student journalists, protecting the student media experience and protecting the IDS’s editorial independence.
Many individual journalism alums have spoken out.
Inside Climate News reporter Lisa Sorg said the university needs to provide a more comprehensive explanation if the decisions are not censorship.
“I think there needs to be a fuller explanation of the suddenness of this decision, of the proximity between the media director being fired and the decision to pull the plug on the print edition,” Sorg said. “We know what it looks like, you know, and so convince me otherwise.”
Student newspapers have the same constitutional rights as professional media outlets, freedom of the press, Sorg said. The message she hears from the university is that it doesn’t value journalistic practices and certain freedoms, she said.
Read more: Daily Student could have First Amendment claim, but legal expert says more facts needed
NPR Critic-at large Eric Deggans said it is critical for the university to discuss with the media and the public the decisions they made. People concerned about the Media School’s commitment to journalism are left to assume why due to insufficient explanation, he said.
Deggans, a former IDS writer who is the journalism and media ethics chair at Washington and Lee University, said with professional journalism under attack politically and with news reporting being labeled as fake news, it is crucial for journalism students to be receiving support from their school.
He said that "the way to survive that with your principles intact is not to not publish news and not to sort of fold up your tent and go home or step back."
Washington Post reporter Emma Uber credits the IDS for where she is professionally and is concerned with how these decisions may negatively impact current and future IU students, she said.
“I like, am a very loud, proud Hoosier and so, and normally, people are just like heaping praise onto the work the students at the IDS do,” she said, “and so to have that association changed because students can no longer freely do the work is really disturbing.”
Besides the IDS being a learning ground for journalism, the IDS print editions have captured local and national history, she said. When former IU basketball coach Bob Knight died Uber said she picked up copies of the paper for her family.
“If you look all the way back, it's produced some of the most pivotal journalists in American history, like Ernie Pyle, and it's a cornerstone of the Indiana University community and culture and so it makes no sense to eliminate,” Uber said.
Read more: Update: IU fires adviser of student media, stops printing Daily Student
Tim Franklin, the John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at Medill-Northwestern University, wrote in a Facebook post in that “In the interest of transparency, I'd make a plea to the Media School at Indiana University to appoint an independent committee to investigate what happened here and publicly release its findings."
And Lookout Eugene-Springfield reporter Annie Aguiar wrote an opinion article for Poynter. She praised the work the IDS has done in its 158 years and condemned the latest decisions by the university.
“This situation makes me ashamed to be a graduate of the IU Media School. But I’ll never be ashamed to be a graduate of the Indiana Daily Student,” Aguiar wrote.
On Friday, members of the journalism faculty at IU issued a statement saying they were "appalled" by the decision to cut print media.
"The faculty at Indiana University are appalled by Chancellor David A. Reingold’s decision to cut the print edition of the Indiana Daily Student hours before publication. This move broke with the Student Media Action Plan, threatened the editorial independence of our student journalists and breached the core values of journalism that we discuss every day in our classrooms," the statement said.
"Indiana University has a long and proud history of student journalism. Our students have done the vital, difficult work of reporting and publishing in a very challenging atmosphere for reporters on campus and around the world. They have weathered many storms, including threats and harassment they received for their coverage of protests on Dunn Meadow. Our students have kept their composure again and again. We are so proud of them.
"In order to honor our students, repair trust with our alumni community and restore the long, proud legacy of journalism at IU, campus leadership should produce a complete, independent accounting of the events of the last week and take ambitious, meaningful actions to show their commitment to journalism’s future," they said.
The statement, which was signed by 19 faculty members, also called for restoring the printed special editions of the IDS.
This story has been updated.