Tension between Indiana University and its student newspaper erupted this week with the elimination of the outlet’s print editions and the firing of a faculty advisor, who rejected an order to keep the news out of a homecoming edition.
Administrators may have hoped to minimize distractions this homecoming weekend as the school prepares to celebrate a Hoosiers football team with the highest national ranking in its history. Instead, the controversy has entangled the school in questions about censorship and the First Amendment rights of journalism students.
Student media advocates, Indiana Daily Student alumni and high-profile supporters, including billionaire Mark Cuban, have criticized the school for trampling on the outlet’s independence.
The Daily Student is routinely honored among the best university publications in the country. It receives about $250,000 a year in grants from the university’s School of Media to help offset declining advertising revenue.
On Tuesday, the university fired the newspaper’s adviser, Jim Rodenbush, after he rejected an order requiring student editors to ensure that no news stories related to homecoming celebrations were published in the print edition.
“I had to make the decision that would allow me to live with myself,” Rodenbush said. “I don’t regret anything. In the current environment we find ourselves in, someone has to come forward.”
IU says journalism students still make decisions
A university spokesperson referred an AP reporter to a statement issued Tuesday that said the campus wants to shift resources from print media to digital platforms both for students’ educational experience and to address the newspaper’s financial problems.
Chancellor David Reingold issued a separate statement Wednesday saying the school is “firmly committed to the free expression and editorial independence of student media. The university has not and will not interfere with its editorial judgment.”
It was late last year when university officials announced they were reducing the print edition of the cash-strapped newspaper from one weekly edition to seven special editions per semester, tied to campus events.
The newspaper published three print editions this fall, inserting special event sections, Rodenbush said. Last month, Media School officials began asking why the special editions still contained news, he said.
Rodenbush said IU Media School Dean David Tolchinsky told him earlier this month that the print editions were expected to contain no news. Tolchinsky argued that Rodenbush was essentially the newspaper’s editor and could decide what to publish, Rodenbush said. He told the dean that publication decisions were the students’ alone, he said.
Tolchinsky fired him Tuesday, two days before the print edition of Homecoming was published, and announced the end of all print publications of the Indiana Daily Student.
“Your lack of leadership and ability to work consistent with the University’s direction for the Student Media Plan is unacceptable,” Tolchinsky wrote in Rodenbush’s termination letter.
The newspaper was allowed to continue publishing stories on its website.
Journalism students see a ‘scare tactic’
Andrew Miller, co-editor in chief of the Indiana Daily Student, said in a statement that Rodenbush “did the right thing by refusing to censor our print edition” and called the firing a “deliberate scare tactic toward journalists and professors.”
“IU has no legal right to dictate what we can and cannot print in our newspaper,” Miller said.
Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, said First Amendment jurisprudence dating back 60 years shows that student editors at public universities determine content. Advisors like Rodenbush cannot interfere, Hiestand said.
“It’s open and shut, and it’s so strange that this is coming out of Indiana University,” Hiestand said. “If this came from a community college that didn’t know any better, that would be one thing. But this is coming from a place that absolutely should know better.”
Rodenbush said he was not aware of any stories published by the newspaper that might have provoked administrators. But he speculated that the measures could be part of a “general progression” of administrators trying to protect the university from any negative publicity.
Blocked from publishing a print edition, the newspaper this week published a series of scathing stories online, including coverage of the release of a new film criticizing the arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters last year, a recounting of sexual assaults on college campuses and an FBI raid on the home of a former professor suspected of stealing federal funds.
The newspaper also covered accusations that IU President Pamela Whitten plagiarized parts of her dissertation; the most recent story was published in September.