Student newspapers fight for future despite threats

By Adriana Bzovii >>

Across the country, student newsrooms are under growing pressure — facing censorship threats, funding cuts and institutional pushback.

In the past two months, at least four student-run outlets have reported efforts by school administrations to restrict their operations, limit press access or sever long-standing partnerships.

At Purdue University, The Exponent said the school informed staff on June 5 that it would no longer distribute the student paper on campus, ending a nearly 50-year partnership. The university said in its email to the newspaper that the paper could distribute the copies themselves, but the Exponent pointed out that some university buildings are closed during the hours the papers are delivered.

Less than two weeks later, the Indiana Daily Student’s editor-in-chief, Jonathan Frey, published an open letter  after Indiana University’s provost overruled a student media board vote to fund the publication. The decision follows months of tension, including an October 2024 announcement that the university’s media school would end the IDS’s weekly print edition. Around the same time, then–lieutenant governor–elect Micah Beckwith publicly criticized the newspaper over a front-page illustration of Donald Trump. In an X post, Beckwith wrote that students called Trump “fascist” while students only cited the comments of the Trump’s former political allies.

Meanwhile at Columbia University, the Columbia Spectator accused campus public safety officers and the New York Police Department of blocking student reporters from covering an on-campus protest in early May. In Virginia, Alexandria City High School faced criticism after its administration attempted to censor the school newspaper.

Readapting and evolving during a crisis

The escalating tensions have forced student publications to make difficult choices about how they operate and how to stay afloat.

The Indiana Daily Student, which has published in print for 158 years, has scaled back its print edition to every two or three weeks in the spring. Frey said the university justified its decision not to support the paper by citing its commitment to keep student tuition flat for the upcoming academic year.

“That does sort of communicate some unwillingness from university higher-ups to help us out at all — or even allow us to be helped out to the extent that they can control it,” Frey said. “Regardless of whether student fees increase, the amount we were recommended was astronomically small relative to what mandatory student fees are.”

In response, the Daily is shifting resources toward video and social media storytelling to maintain its presence and reach. “We are going to continue to evolve. We’re going to grow our social and multimedia teams,” Frey said. “We will only stop writing and printing if we determine that it is no longer financially viable and that it is no longer helping our readers.”

Frey is also calling on universities, professional journalists and national media organizations to acknowledge and support student journalism as vital to the broader news ecosystem.

“I would say acknowledgement is the best form of assistance,” he said. “If people want to give us money, we’re not going to say no. Money is only a one-time fix, and we’re working on ways to figure out how to make our money last longer. But I think something larger journalism organizations and professionals can do is cite us.”

The Society of Professional Journalists is among the national groups stepping up. In support of the Daily. SPJ sent an open letter and launched a fundraising campaign featuring T-shirts printed with the controversial cover — a photo illustration of Donald Trump — and the phrase “Try and stop us.”

“The biggest way we can do that is to help them with fundraising and letters of support to their school administrators, to elected officials, whoever is bothering them and make clear that these students are not doing anything wrong. They are simply exercising their First Amendment rights, “ said Beatrice Forman, a Philadelphia Inquirer journalist and director of SPJ.

Forman said the most significant threat for student journalists is their lack of confidence. For this reason, SPJ focuses on consulting young reporters and advocating for their rights. SPJ also trains young journalists through a partnership with Google and supports New Voices legislation in collaboration with the Student Press Law Center. New Voices laws expand the free speech rights of student journalists and block state and school officials from censoring their content.

“We get a lot of calls through our ethics hotline. We have a 24/7 email line,” Forman said. “A lot of these conversations start with a student journalist saying, ‘I’m having a weird interaction with a school administrator or an official.’”

Forman urges officials and school administrators to contribute to the development of a new generation of journalists by offering opportunities to learn and thrive. 

“If you want the next generation to get better, you can’t censor them,” Forman said. “They’re never going to know their full capabilities and they’re not given the environment to learn how to do their job correctly.”

Investing in partnerships — the key to independence

The recent wave of challenges has cast a shadow over student newsrooms nationwide even those not directly under threat.

Sam Gregerman, a senior at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and editor-in-chief of The Daily Illini, said that while her newsroom has a strong relationship with university leadership, the headlines from other campuses have raised concerns.

“While we don’t receive any funding from the university, we have partnerships in that we have news boxes and newsstands in a lot of the academic buildings,”Gregerman said. “We’d like to maintain that good relationship with the administration but it’s definitely concerning to see what is happening to other student newspapers as well.”

Gregerman is a big advocate for independent student newspapers. She said that writing more about what is happening outside the universities and investing more resources in building partnerships will help student newspapers maintain their independence.

“We don’t just report on the university. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday doing deep reporting on the Urbana City Council fiscal year 2026 budget, “Gregerman said. “It means focusing your energy elsewhere and building relationships with people that you could find support from or reaching out to other universities who you might be able to gain support from.”

College journalists in Illinois also have a big assist from the state law that keeps administrators and state officials from censoring content. Illinois is one of 18 states that have adopted New Voices laws protecting the editorial freedom of college journalists, according to the Student Press Law Center. The First Amendment does not provide that protection because of the 1988 Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier decision that grew out of a St. Louis controversy. 

Getting confidence by making your voice heard

In early June, the Student Press Law Center and the Society of Professional Journalists organized a webinar to discuss the threats to the editorial independence of student newspapers focusing on the case of Theogony, the Alexandria City High School newspaper.

As James Libresco, a high school student and co-editor of Theogony, said in the webinar, the attack began after they published a story about a transportation issue. The story criticized the inadequacy of student buses, which often were late.

“We’re not people who are coming out here trying to disparage our school for some reason,” Libresco said. “We want to make it a better place.”

After publishing the article, the transport services for students in Alexandria were improved, according to Rozalia Finkelstein, another leading student journalist at Theogony. 

“This experience of being able to be in a newspaper that does these things and helps make change has taught me the importance of journalism, especially in a modern world,” Finkelstein said. 

Following this great success, the high school administration requested access to the entire list of ongoing articles to review and supervise the interviews. 

“We would have to conduct all our interviews with the school PR team present, which logistically is just not possible,” Libresco said. “That would intimidate the people who were interviewing, especially teachers. If your boss is watching you, you’re not going to speak your mind truly.”

All these requirements were included under a new school policy prepared for review. To protect their stories, student journalists developed a policy proposal. 

“School district released their draft of what they wanted to see. And it was about the exact opposite of Voices Unbound,” Libresco said. “If we interviewed teachers for a local publication without going through the school PR team, we could be fired from the school newspaper.”

Following the Supreme Court’s 1988 decision in Hazelwood case 18 states such as Massachusetts, Iowa, Illinois, Colorado, Kansas and Oregon, adopted laws to protect students from censorship and give them speech rights. But Virginia was not one of them. But Jonathan Gaston Falk, SPLC staff attorney, explained that there is a limit to the extent to which the school administration can punish students.

“This school district, in its original incarnation of that proposed policy, massively overstepped,” said Falk. “These students want to hold their folks in authority accountable. And that’s one of the basic tenets of the First Amendment of the freedom of speech and of the press.”

Supported by other journalists and organizations that advocate for the right to free speech, student journalists from Alexandria High School began to speak more openly about their fight with the school administration, gaining more confidence in their voices. 

“I feel like us speaking up about our censorship has maybe inspired or given other student journalists the confidence to do the same,” Libresco said. “And it’s not just schools near us.”

The SPLC advocacy officer, Grayson Marlow, encouraged students to make their voices heard. 

“Just know that student journalism protections can’t happen unless students are telling their stories. So, know that you should tell your story and SPLC has your back,” Marlow said.

Adriana Bzovii is a Fulbright student from Moldova, pursuing a master’s at SIUC’s School of Journalism and Advertising. Currently, she is a summer intern at GJR.