BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA — After officials at the Indiana University Media School ordered the Indiana Daily Student to stop printing hard news this fall and to limit its paper editions to themed or promotional content, co-editors-in-chief Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller pulled out two sticky notes and drafted a plan for their next edition. If administrators rescinded their order, as the student journalists had requested, staff would print what they wanted, as they always had. If the restriction stayed in place, they’d ignore it and run an editorial on the front page condemning the attempt to control their coverage.
But before they could follow through on either plan, longtime adviser Jim Rodenbush was fired, and university officials blocked any future print editions of the 158-year-old paper.
The university framed the move not as retaliation but as part of a larger restructuring of student media. The timing told a different story. Two days before the Indiana Daily Student’s special homecoming edition was set to print – an issue that included both feature coverage and hard news – David Tolchinsky, dean of Media Arts, announced an update to the Action Plan for Student Media, a strategy that was created in October 2024 to eliminate budget deficits and preserve student media outlets.
“As you may recall, the Action Plan, which was endorsed by IU Bloomington campus leadership, outlines a shift from print to digital platforms,” Tolchinsky wrote in an email to the editors. “In support of the Action Plan, the campus has decided to make this shift effective this week, aligning IU with industry trends and offering experiential opportunities more consistent with digital-first media careers of the future.”
Tolchinsky’s message left no room for negotiation.
On Thursday, Oct. 16, the day the print issue was originally scheduled to be out, the IDS published online only. Big red letters on the front page of the e-edition read “CENSORED.” Instead of ads, which they’d typically sell for print, the staff ran black boxes with messages about lost sales.
The decisions, which followed a weekslong-dispute over what content could be printed, has led to scrutiny from First Amendment advocates and raised questions about press freedom and administrative control.
“This is not about print itself. This is about the breach of editorial independence that the university is detecting,” Miller said. “We’re not going nuclear over print being cut. We’re going nuclear because the university cut print after deciding to censor our paper.”
Timeline of events
When the action plan was first announced, IDS printed weekly, distributing copies on campus and in Monroe County. Beginning with the Spring 2024 semester, the plan reduced the paper to seven special editions per semester, which it identified as “high-revenue issues.”
In addition to publishing online, the student journalists continued to print news coverage, and included the special editions as inserts in the paper. In an Oct. 20 interview with GJR, Rodenbush said the reduction saved the program around $20,000 during the spring semester, while continuing to generate revenue. Everything was working out great, he said, until IU leadership started pushing for the paper to focus solely on the themed content.
“When the fall was coming, when things were about to crank up, is when I started to hear that the provost was concerned that he was still seeing newspapers in the newsstands,” Rodenbush said. “I believe that he likely thought that he was going to see ‘Homecoming Guide.’ But instead, he’s looking down and seeing the front page of the IDS with Homecoming Guide inserted.”
Following the second edition of the semester, which printed on Sept. 11, Rodenbush said the request became a topic of many meetings with administrators at the media school. He said he would relay the requests to the editors, but left the final decision to their discretion. As student media director since 2018, Rodenbush believed it was his duty to not interfere with content. Student media should be left alone, he said, because “it’s the perfect setup for training reporters for the real world.”
On Sept. 25, the IDS printed the edition that would be their last. Rodenbush was called into another meeting, which he described as “animated” and says he was yelled at.
“That was really when I first pushed back about what I was being asked to do,” he said. “I mean, I was basically being asked to ensure that the wishes of the provost were executed. And I began to push back about what that meant and censorship and editorial independence, and it’s not my decision — it’s a student’s decision.”
Rodenbush said he persisted in his beliefs through two more meetings after that. On the evening of Oct. 7, he sent an email to Hilkowitz and Miller explaining what had been discussed: their next edition was to contain solely information about Homecoming: “no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage.” He told the students that as an alternative, news could be distributed in the city of Bloomington, but not on campus.
“It’s my understanding that this is an expectation, not a suggestion,” he wrote.
On Oct. 14, Rodenbush was fired in a short meeting with an HR representative and Tolchinsky. The dean wrote in a termination letter that Rodenbush’s “lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the University’s direction for the Student Media Plan is unacceptable.” But the student editors say they believe it was a scare tactic — one that’s created a “chilling effect.”
“We have other professional members, a lot of journalists and faculty, who swore to protect our First Amendment rights and support journalists,” Hilkowitz said, “and we just had a faculty member who had been doing this for years who was fired for doing just that.”
The termination meeting took place at 4:30 p.m. Later that day, at 7:19 p.m., just before publishing an editorial on Rodenbush’s firing, Hilkowitz and Miller learned through email that IDS print was being discontinued. They asked for clarification, but did not receive a response.
“I think they canceled print as a way to try to cover their tracks,” Hilkowitz said. “And I just hope that people realize that this is retaliatory.”
Dean Tolchinsky and Provost Rahul Shrivastav could not be reached for an interview. IU Chancellor David Reingold said in a statement that the decision “concerns the medium of distribution, not editorial content,” according to an IDS letter from the editors.
“We uphold the right of student journalists to pursue stories freely and without interference,” Reingold said.
But as the situation reached national news, the backlash has amounted. Ursula Stickelmaier, an arts editor at the IDS was disheartened by the university’s response, and said administration “doesn’t value student journalism in a way that is substantial.” A Seattle native, Stickelmaier said she came to IU specifically for the newspaper. High-profile alum Mark Cuban, who donated $250,000 to the IDS months before print was cut, according to reporting by the IndyStar, took to X to express his disappointment, writing “censorship isn’t the way.” The Indiana University Bloomington Association of University Professors released a statement on Oct. 16 asking the university to reconsider its actions, which the organization described as “a clear violation of First Amendment protections of freedom of the press.”
While the university said its decision to cut print was driven by business considerations and a shift to digital media, Hilkowitz and Miller say the move was unnecessary. They reported that the first three editions of the semester generated $11,000 from advertising, which they’ve now had to cut ties with, and that they’ve already largely focused on digital content.
“We’re getting hundreds of thousands of page views every single month,” Hilkowitz said. “We have a very successful podcast. We just won a pacemaker for our multimedia…They’re going to say it’s a business decision. That is a completely illogical argument.”
Rodenbush said that IU’s action plan made sense initially, when the paper was reduced to seven special editions, because it was content neutral. “The minute they made it about content is the minute that it crossed the line,” he said.
The censorship debate
In 1988, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier that it was not a violation of student journalist’s First Amendment right to free speech when school officials at St. Louis’ Hazelwood East High School prevented the publication of controversial articles on student pregnancy and parental divorce in their student newspaper. Because it was a public high school, and the newspaper was sponsored by the school, the court ruled that the articles were state-sponsored speech and not public forums.
IDS receives some funding from the university’s Media School; it is not funded by state tax dollars. In its fundraising disclosure, the IDS notes that it may accept funding directed at covering certain topics, but “remains completely independent of such funds in order to produce the highest quality journalism that best serves our audience.”
Whether the Hazelwood decision applies to college publications has long been debated.
“If there is some sort of decision like cutting print, then that alone, in a vacuum by itself, is not onerous to the First Amendment,” said Jonathan Gaston-Falk, an education law attorney at the Student Press Law Center. “It’s when we have these connections where that is a retaliatory effort to stifle that voice, then we have a First Amendment problem.”
Rodenbush said that he has served as an adviser for four university newspapers, including Penn State university, during the time that The Daily Collegian reported on Jerry Sandusky’s child sexual abuse. He said IU was the first time he’s experienced “attempted influence” from a university.
But IU’s recent decisions are not the first time the IDS has been at the center of controversy. Hilkowitz said they’ve dealt with threats online and in person: angry emails, reporters being doxxed and readers visiting the office to confront staff.
On Nov. 7, 2024, after Donald Trump was elected president for a second term, the IDS’ front cover featured an illustration of Trump accompanied by negative quotes from his former political allies. In a post on X, then Indiana Lt. Governor-elect Micah Beckwith incorrectly claimed that state tax dollars were funding the student newspaper, and wrote, “This type of elitist leftist propaganda needs to stop or we will be happy to stop it for them.”
“We’re very used to receiving threats from outside, from people outside of IU, from other students outside the media school institution,” Hilkowitz said. “This is the first time where I feel like it’s a call coming from inside the house.”
What now?
Josh Moore, assistant director of SPLC, said it’s too early to tell whether the events at IU have spiked similar cases around the country. But requests to their legal hotline, which allows student journalists to speak directly with attorneys, has increased by 42% over the last two academic years due to many different threats.
“This should be something that every single collegiate publication across the country is worried about. IDS, we’ve been around for 158 years. That’s a long time and we have a lot of resources, we have a lot of history behind us,” Hilkowitz said, adding, “If IU was allowed to do this, I worry that administrators at different schools who are looking to censor their student publications and their students will look at this almost as a blueprint for what to do there.”
On Oct. 20, Tolchinsky, the media school dean, announced a formation of a student media task force at IU. In a press release, Tolchinsky said the task force, which will consist of faculty, staff, students and alumni, is to be appointed in the coming weeks. The goal of the initiative is to “develop recommendations ensuring both the editorial independence and financial sustainability of student media at IU.”
Gaston-Falk, the SPLC attorney, said that he would like to be fully optimistic about the initiative, but that at first glance, it appears to be a distraction.
“Administration is keeping itself busy, making it look like things are happening in order to assert its legitimacy, instead of actually engaging with some of its stakeholders on the ground like IDS editors and staff,” he said.
Rodenbush, Hilkowitz and Miller have all been in talks with legal counsel. Rodenbush said his current intention is to sue IU.
Despite his firing, Rodenbush said he never wavered in his decision.
“I understood that there were possible severe consequences,” he said. “But I had to do what was going to help me sleep. So I’m comfortable in that.”
For now, Hilkowitz and Miller say they’re seeing support. Staff at Purdue University’s The Exponent published special edition newspapers in solidarity and drove two hours to deliver them on IU’s campus. Hilkowitz said she didn’t realize the workers at a nearby coffee shop knew her name until they offered her a free drink shortly after news broke that print had been cut. While preparing for a portrait on Oct. 20, a campus tutor stops to tell them to keep up the good work.
“We’re going to keep producing really great journalism,” Hilkowitz said. “We’ve been really lucky that this has really sparked a fire under so many of our staffers, and they’re ready to keep doing this important reporting. So as much as IU is going to try to stop the reporting from getting out there, they’re not gonna let that happen. We’re not going to let that happen.”
Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series for the Gateway Journalism Review, produced with funding from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Carly Gist is the deputy editor of the Daily Egyptian at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
