Why Student Media Matters

By Aaron Sussman, WireTap. Posted October 1, 2006.

If writing for the school newspaper is good experience for a career in journalism, then dealing with censorship, administrative pressure, funding trouble, and the host of issues that affect those in student media is indispensable experience for a life in today's media.

Student media issues are often dismissed as unimportant ("You have to understand I've never taken the student paper very seriously -- these are kids," says John Schulz, the dean of Boston University's communications college). They are often considered insular to the world of higher education, relegated to the trite analogy of the university "bubble." A serious examination, though, reveals that these so-called "student issues" are not only significant in their own right, but have profound implications for and parallels to the broader mainstream and independent media.

"College journalists are breaking stories, shaping news coverage and making law that all journalists (and all who care about the profession) should be interested in," says Mark Goodman, director of the Student Press Law Center. Sara Gruen, the coordinator of the Independent Press Association's Campus Journalism Project, takes the role of the student journalist even further, claiming that "campus papers can save journalism." "As mergers and budget cuts squeeze local papers ever tighter," writes Gruen, "indy campus reporting has an increasing role in documenting local news."

There are hundreds upon hundreds of campus publications -- Wikipedia lists 383, NewsLink.org lists 392 and eReleases.com tops them all with 470 -- and many of the most prestigious professionals in journalism today began their careers with college publications. As a student at Pomona College, executive editor of the New York Times Bill Keller founded an independent newspaper called the Collage. David Remnick, before becoming editor of the New Yorker, worked at Princeton University's Nassau Weekly. In the Vietnam era, student newspapers like the Michigan Daily (and its editor-in-chief Tom Hayden) were instrumental in fomenting and interpreting the mass social movements that centered on youth.

While student journalists, as Goodman points out, are breaking their own stories, they are also gaining experiences that will influence their careers in the mainstream and independent media, experiences that can potentially affect people all over the world. This is one reason that student media issues transcend the campus walls and can have far-reaching ramifications.

While the mainstream media is often criticized for succumbing to administration pressure and not vociferously questioning government policies and assertions -- most notably, perhaps, with Bush administration claims of WMD in Iraq and an Iraq-9/11 link -- the student press has often displayed the courage and principles to stand up to what it feels are unfair or repressive decisions made by the school administration.

At Essex County College's Observer, students raised $1,100 to publish their own graduation issue after Susan Mulligan, the dean of students, shut down printing. Dean Mulligan insists that the newspaper was shut down because it lacked an official advisor, and called censorship claims "absurd," the Observer's editor-in-chief, Melinda Hernandez, asserted that the real gripe arose because the paper began to criticize the school administration. The staff of the Observer turned the issue into a "bill of rights" edition.

Censorship and funding are two issues that most often affect student media. Dean Mulligan was able to cancel printing because the Observer is financially supported through the college's payroll system, allowing officials to cancel payment.

The manner in which a publication is funded was a central issue in the case Hosty v. Carter (7th Cir., 2005), in which three staff member of Governors State University's The Innovator sued the university after dean Patricia Carter impeded publication and demanded prior review because of articles that had been critical of the administration. The Court found that it was unclear whether the decision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, which held that high school publications could be regulated by school officials, applied to colleges, effectively absolving Carter.

Aaron Sussman is the co-founder of the soon-to-be launched publications "Incite Magazine" and MediaChannel U. You can see more of his work at his website, A Crowded Fire.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from WireTap! Sign up now »