Student journalists are often taught, implicitly or explicitly, that their role is to be adversarial.
Hold power accountable. Ask tough questions. Don’t trust the official line.
All of that is true but also incomplete.
In professional newsrooms, accountability does not come from hostility; it comes from reporting, the kind built on sourcing and credibility.
At The Washington Post, I learned to be a beat reporter covering county government, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the commercial insurance industry, Congressional committees and the U.S. Army. On a beat, I learned I had to show up for the little stories in order to earn access to the bigger ones. One time, it meant joining a major developer on a pre-dawn run around the empty streets of Washington, D.C. Another time it meant sitting quietly on a story in Baghdad so I wouldn’t put lives at risk.
Covering a beat meant building relationships, knowing whom to call and being transparent about what I was working on. That’s real reporting, and something I teach now as a journalism professor and faculty advisor to the Columbia Chronicle at Columbia College Chicago.
Too often, college newsrooms frame their relationship with college and university communications offices as inherently adversarial. The assumption is that access compromises independence, or that cooperation weakens accountability.
In reality, the opposite is often true.
When student journalists treat their campus as a beat, consistently, fairly and transparently, they produce stronger journalism. They ask better questions because they understand the institution. They hold leaders accountable because they know where to look, and they build credibility because their reporting is grounded, not reactive. That kind of reporting requires access, and access requires structure.
At Columbia, that structure did not happen by accident.
The first conversation I had with Lambrini Lukidis, the college’s former communications chief, was a few weeks into my tenure as faculty advisor. A student reporter at the Chronicle was trying to find out if the college invested in fossil fuels but didn’t want to disclose that’s what they were after. Lukidis was understandably frustrated. She wanted to be helpful, but the student journalist wasn’t being upfront about what they wanted.
I knew then that the culture had to change, and with the help of the student editors, it did. For the past several years, the Chronicle has consistently reported the most important news on campus, accurately and professionally. They still make mistakes because they are learning. They don’t always understand the context and usually because someone has not taken the time to explain it to them. But for the most part, their work is professional, high quality and informed.
Lukidis served as the primary liaison between the Chronicle and the administration. Her role required balancing the institution’s interests with the need to respond, explain and engage. That did not mean she was not doing her job. It meant she was doing it well.
When that structure disappears, the consequences are immediate.
The college eliminated its top communications position last week, laying off Lukidis as part of broader budget cuts tied to its deficit. In her absence, our student journalists lost a consistent point of access, an institutional translator and someone who understood how journalism works.
Two days after she was laid off, our student TV outlet, “South Loop TV,” produced through a capstone course, was denied access to a campus event with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. If Lukidis had still been at the college, she would have made sure they got in because strategically, it just makes sense. But Lukidis was gone, and I had no one to call.
This is not about whether a communications office protects the institution. It should.
But without a professional, responsive intermediary, access becomes inconsistent, answers become harder to obtain and reporting becomes more reactive than informed.
In that environment, students don’t learn how to cover a beat. They learn how to chase scraps.
A healthy relationship between student media and college communications is not about comfort. It’s about clarity. It’s about understanding roles.
Student journalists should challenge power, scrutinize decisions and pursue stories that matter. But they should also learn how to cover a beat. It’s a dance, and as the best beat reporters know, it sometimes involves a compromise, which is not the same as being compromised. The relationship between a reporter and a communications office requires trust and respect for each other’s role.
These are not soft skills. They are professional standards, the difference between journalism that reacts and journalism that leads.
Communications offices should not see student media as a threat to manage or as an extension of their public relations efforts, which is most definitely not the role of a journalist in a democratic society. They should see student media as a newsroom to engage. We were lucky to have that with Lukidis. For their part, student journalists should see access as an opportunity to do better work.
After all, the goal is not alignment. The goal is accountability, built on reporting that is credible, transparent and strong enough to stand on its own.
Without a communications chief who understands this work, without an administration that supports what they do, student journalists at Columbia College will have a harder time getting accurate information, and the institution itself will be left with half-told stories.
Jackie Spinner is the editor of GJR and a professor at Columbia College Chicago, where is the faculty advisor to the award-winning Columbia Chronicle.
