On October 21, Andrew Miller, co-editor-in-chief of Indiana University’s (IU) student newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student (IDS) came to talk to the BHSN journalism class about the recent incident with the IDS and speak on freedom of press.
Freshman Kyra Brown said, “I learned to keep fighting for what you love. If you really love something, you will fight to keep it going, or fight to keep it in business, or fight to be able to do it.”
Before the issue was set to print on October 16, the Indiana University (IU) Media School told Director of Student Media, Jim Rodenbush, that the upcoming IDS issue should include no news at all, only the homecoming special insert. Rodenbush and the IDS staff both saw this as a violation of their first amendment rights and the IDS charter. On October 14, after Rodenbush refused to implement the Media School’s directive and change the upcoming issue of the IDS, IU Media School dean David Tolchinsky signed and sent a termination letter to Rodenbush, firing him from his position, effective immediately. That same night, IU addressed their directive to cut print entirely from the IDS, making the IDS an only online paper after 158 years of being a print newspaper.
“The reason that we’re really fighting back so hard on this is not because of the print specifically, it’s because the university used an irrational business decision to justify a directive that would change content,” Miller told the journalism students.
The main debate is whether IU is censoring the IDS and its staff, or if IU is making a financial business decision to help the program. Journalism student Emi Carmona said, “I guess [IU] is putting the IDS on the back burner and taking away a lot of their privileges, and I think that this is just another one of those decisions to cut back and so I think … this is just a clear example of censorship.”
IU administrators addressed this change and said it was a business directive to save money and give the IDS more time to focus on its online presence. From the 3 editions the IDS has printed this semester, they’ve made around $11,000 in profit, “But cutting print immediately on a Tuesday … canceled the contracts with advertisers, so we lost money on that, and our reputation with advertisers has plummeted because we were seen as less dependable at this point,” Miller said.
Over the past two weeks, co-editors Miller and Mia Hilkowitz have received a lot of media requests: The Indianapolis Star, The Washington Post and The New York Times, for example, have given the incident national attention. They have also received a lot of support from other IU faculty, and alumni, including Mark Cuban, who donated $250,000 over the summer to help pay for staff salaries.
“National pressure at this point is kind of forcing [IU’s] hand in hearing our voices at the moment. I mean, our digital presence, which they sought to expand, has kind of exploded over the past week,” Miller said, explaining how meetings with IU administration have gone.
Over the past two weeks, the IDS has still been writing and publishing the same amount of content, if not more, than they did before.
“[Student reporters] are kind of feeling the fire lit under them, feeling like how important the work that they’re doing is, and I think that that’s important to see,” Miller said.
This situation taught the importance of journalism for the students at North. Carmona said, “I think that some of the stuff Andrew said really helped me kind of appreciate and reflect on the kind of privileges that I have as a young journalist.”
Miller said, “I think what the work we’re doing is important. I personally find a lot of gratification out of it. Ultimately, the moral philosophy for me is trying to get a more interconnected world and a world that is more accountable. And I think that journalism is probably one of the best ways to do that.”
