Tensions between Indiana University and its student newspaper escalated last week with the discontinuation of the paper’s print edition and the firing of an academic advisor who refused an order not to publish news stories in the homecoming edition.
Administrators may have wanted to minimize distractions over homecoming weekend as the school prepares to celebrate the Hoosiers football team’s highest national ranking in history. Instead, the controversy involved the school in questions about censorship and the First Amendment rights of student journalists.
Prominent supporters, including student media advocates, Indiana Daily Student alumni and billionaires, have accused the university of trampling on the paper’s independence.
The Daily Student is regularly recognized as one of the best university publications in the country. The school receives an annual grant of about $250,000 from the university’s media school to offset declining advertising revenue.
The university fired Jim Rodenbush, an adviser to the paper, on Tuesday. He refused an order forcing student editors to keep news stories related to homecoming celebrations out of print editions.
“I had to make a decision to live with myself,” Rodenbush said. “I have no regrets at all. In the current environment, someone has to stand up.”
Student journalists still have decision-making power
A university spokesperson referred an Associated Press reporter to a statement released Tuesday saying the campus wants to transition resources from print to digital platforms for both the educational experience of students and to address the newspaper’s financial issues.
President David Rheingold issued a separate statement Wednesday, saying the university is “firmly committed to the freedom of expression and editorial independence of student media. The university has not and will not interfere in the editorial decisions of student media.”
It was late last year that university officials announced that the paper’s cash-strapped print edition would be scaled back from weekly to seven special editions each semester to coincide with campus events.
Rodenbush said the paper published three print editions this fall with special events sections. He said media school officials began asking questions last month about why news was included in the special edition.
Rodenbush said IU School of Media Dean David Tolchinski was told this month that the print edition was not expected to include news. Mr. Torchinsky argued that Mr. Rodenbusch was essentially the paper’s publisher and could decide what to publish. He said he told the dean that decisions about publication were the students’ own.
Mr. Tolchinsky fired him on Tuesday, two days before the Homecoming print edition was scheduled to be published, and announced the end of all print publication of the Indiana Daily Student.
“Your lack of leadership and inability to work in alignment with the university’s direction for student media planning is unacceptable,” Tolczynski wrote in Rodenbush’s termination letter.
The newspaper was allowed to continue publishing articles on its website.
Student journalists watch ‘Fear Strategies’
Andrew Miller, co-editor of the Indiana Daily Student, said in a statement that Rodenbush “did the right thing by refusing to censor the print edition” and called the firing “an intentional intimidation tactic against journalists and faculty.”
“IU has no legal right to dictate what can and cannot be printed in its newspapers,” Miller said.
Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, said First Amendment case law dating back 60 years shows that student editors at public universities determine content. Hiestand said advisers like Rodenbusch cannot intervene.
“It’s opened and closed, but it’s very strange that this is coming out of Indiana University,” Hiestand said. “It would be different if this was coming out of a community college that you know nothing about, but this is coming out of a place that you absolutely should know.”
Rodenbush said he was not aware of any articles published by the paper that might have provoked administrators. But he speculated that the move was part of a “general progression” by administrators seeking to protect their universities from any negative publicity.
The newspaper, which has been blocked from publishing in print, published a number of hard-hitting articles online last week, including reporting on the opening of a new film criticizing last year’s arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters, a tally of sexual assaults on campus, and an FBI raid on the home of a former professor suspected of stealing federal funds.
The paper also covered allegations that IU President Pamela Witten plagiarized portions of her doctoral thesis, with the most recent article published in September.
Richmond writes for The Associated Press.
