This is excerpted from an article published in the St. Louis Law Journal. Sableman first called attention to the broad redaction law when it was enacted in 2023. GJR played a lead role in bringing it to wider attention, leading to a court decision striking down provisions as unconstitutional. To implement the recent court decision and to promote the public interest in transparency of judicial proceedings, lawyers who brought the challenge and individual lawyers and law associations are advocating changes to court rules that clarify the limited subjects traditionally redacted – names of juveniles and victims of sex crimes.

Names are back in Missouri state courts. 

Pleadings are again understandable to everyone, not just insiders.  As a result, journalists can fairly report on cases, interested persons can monitor cases, and researchers and historians will be able to use court records and opinions as source materials in the same way as has been done for centuries.

For lawyers, their burden of redacting names from all pleadings and exhibits has been relieved.  They and court clerks can go back to business as normal.

 Judge Aaron Martin of Moniteau County, sitting specially in Cole County Circuit Court, on December 20, 2024, granted a partial judgment on the pleadings to the plaintiffs who were challenging the constitutionality of the Missouri Legislature’s bill, passed in 2023, which required redaction of all witness and victim names from court filings.

The plaintiffs included appellate lawyers Michael Gross and Nina McDonnell, journalist William Freivogel, the Missouri Broadcasters Association, and Gray Local Media.  (I was one of the attorneys for MBA and Gray.)  The defendants were the state, the governor, and the attorney general….

Judge Martin (found)  the redaction law was unconstitutional under both the First Amendment of the federal constitution and the Open Courts provision of the Missouri Constitution.  He also enjoined the defendants…from enforcing the redaction provisions. His order was effective when issued, on December 20, although a clarifying order was issued on January 2.

The redaction mandate (had) represented a sharp break from past Missouri practice.

Missouri court documents have long been generally open to the public, subject to limited exclusions. Court Operating Rule 2, which addresses access to court records, begins with the principle, “Records of all courts are presumed to be open to any member of the public for purposes of inspection or copying.”  It then provides for redaction of information “that is confidential pursuant to statute, court rule or order, or other law.”  Those exceptions, which have been crafted and enacted over time, relate to particular sensitive situations, chiefly arising in juvenile, family or criminal contexts.  

That was changed radically in 2023 with the legislature’s enactment of SB 103, a lengthy omnibus bill, that included a short amendment to section 509.520.1 of Missouri Revised Statutes, adding language which made it mandatory for all lawyers and court personnel to redact all witness and victim names from court filings.  These provisions originated with a bill submitted by a freshman legislator who did not like the fact that an order of protection entered against him was in the public record. (He later tried to make that record confidential, and sued a political opponent who had let others know about it.) 

There were no hearings on this proposal other than the short one in which the sponsor introduced it. That provision eventually got added onto several omnibus bills, one of which, SB 103, passed and was signed by Governor Parson.

As a result, on the law’s effective date, August 28, 2023, redaction of all witness and victim names became mandatory.  Because the opening of CaseNet to more direct public access, beginning in July 2023, had prompted officials to tighten procedures with respect to redactions, this meant that the new Confidential Redacted Information Filing Sheet (CRIFS) would need to be used on practically all new court filings.   

Beginning after August 2023, appellate decisions began circumventing use of names in various ways.  Participants were referred to by their position or function (“Nurse 1), their relationships (“Victim’s Mother”; “Defendant’s Neighbor”) or by initials (“Officer M.J.”).  It seems likely that some decisions summarized more, and provided fewer details on the factual basis of the dispute being decided, because of the constraint of the new redaction rule.

Various parties, including the Missouri Broadcasters Association, asked the legislature to repeal or fix the statute, but while repeal bills passed the House of Representatives and the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2024, the end-of-term paralysis in the Senate that year prevented full passage.

Accordingly, in May 2024, Plaintiffs sued to invalidate the new statutory rules. (They) challenged the constitutionality of the redaction provision based on the First Amendment and the Open Courts provision of the Missouri Constitution. . …  

The State did not vigorously challenge the concept that blanket redaction rules violated the First Amendment and Open Courts provision.  In one motion, the Attorney General acknowledged that provisions to that effect are “likely” unconstitutional.  Rather the state primarily sought to save the act by arguing that it didn’t really mean to set new blanket redaction requirements, and only meant to reaffirm the existing, much more limited, redaction rules.

But Judge Martin did not accept this interpretation, and at argument referred to the fact that section 509.520.1 begins by stating that “the following confidential and personally identifiable information” must be redacted, with witness and victim names and identifying information listed in two of the following subsections. 

As to the substantive reasons for unconstitutionality, Plaintiffs cited both extensive authorities on the key principles of the First Amendment public right of access to courts, and the Open Courts right, as well as two 2024 cases on similar issues.  In a federal challenge to a Hawaii redaction rule, the Ninth Circuit found that rule unconstitutional. And in an Ohio state case, that state’s Supreme Court found redaction rules unconstitutional under the Ohio Open Courts provision. 

Mark Sableman is a partner at Thompson Coburn LLP and treasurer of the Gateway Journalism Review. William H. Freivogel, publisher of GJR, was a named plaintiff in the case and was represented by former Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael A. Wolff.

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 general assignments reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer and an at-large 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 if 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. 

On March 14, President Trump issued an Executive Order that dismantled the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)  and most of its staff. On May 1, the United States District Court of the District of Columbia temporarily delayed the effect of Trump’s order. It acted on a lawsuit filed by the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). IMLS staff that were let go are now back to work and disbursing grants.

However, some libraries have already cancelled many services and cut staff salaries that rely on those grants and the proposed White House budget for fiscal year 2026 would cut the library services from $313 million to $6 million. This month another judge in a separate case has declined to block the dismantling of IMLS,  leaving conflicting federal court decisions and confusion about future federal funding of libraries.

As a result of the confusion, librarians have found themselves answering the question of what do libraries do? What do they offer besides loaning out a limited selection of books and DVDs/Blu-rays? 

As a librarian in Centralia, I can say that the answer to that is, actually, a little bit of everything.

Traditional collection

A library’s traditional collection of traditional media is important. Illinois is home to over 5,000 libraries of several types (public, school, academic, special), most of which belong to one of three consortia: Illinois Heartland Library System (IHLS) in southern and parts of central Illinois, Reaching Across Illinois Library System (RAILS) in northern and the other parts of central Illinois, and the Chicago Public Library (CPL) system. This means that having a single library card in one of these systems grants the card owner borrowing privileges to roughly half of the state’s libraries’ collections through a revolutionary type of interlibrary loaning system.

Inter-branch loaning, like what’s done in the Chicago system, is the most common interlibrary loaning among libraries across the country, as it involves splitting the main library’s collection up into multiple locations across the city, county, or municipality. The main library and its branch libraries then send parts of their own collection back and forth to each location, making it easier to store such a large quantity of items and for patrons to access that vast collection regardless of which branch is their “home” library.

Across the rest of Illinois, however, interlibrary loaning goes even further. One library card can get you access to the collections of over 1,200 libraries of all types in northern and west-central Illinois through RAILS and over 500 in the rest of central and southern Illinois through IHLS.

However, not many people know about the systems. There is also the enduring belief that libraries are simply book warehouses with some computer access,, and for many, public and school libraries are simply nonexistent.

“I loved to read, but had no notion that a public library was an option to me as there were none available in the towns I lived or went to school in,” said Kelsey Schaepperkoetter from rural Nashville, Il.

The nearest public library to Schaepperkoetter when she was a child was 30 minutes away and her family would have had to pay $75 annually to use that library.

“At the time, my perception of a library was a place to get books, and I thought the price was too high,” she said. She is now the director of the Nashville Public Library, part of IHLS.

Out-of-district library cards still exist, even with so many libraries inside of the three major regional systems. For patrons with a local public library that is not in one of the systems, they may be eligible for a reciprocal barcode added to their home library card from the nearest system library. These reciprocal privileges are negotiated between the libraries and must have approval by the patron’s home library before being granted. It’s typically free, but may also have some limitations, such as being locked out of digital collections that need a library card pin number to access.

Sometimes more rural addresses fall just outside of the reach of the nearest public library, in-system or not. Those patrons have no choice but to pay for one of the out-of-district cards. However, this fee is the equivalent of what an in-district patron would pay in taxes that would make the library card prepaid (“free”) for them. Usually, the amount of money saved by an out-of-district patron for using the library system far outweighs the cost of the card.

“As our community is rural, many individuals travel outside of town for entertainment, shopping and groceries. Libraries in neighboring towns that our patrons travel to, often stop by to browse their larger section while running their errands,” Schaepperkoetter said. “This has not only increased our patrons visiting other libraries, but also interlibrary loan requests.”

O’Fallon’s tubs of books

It’s the same for more urban areas too, such as O’Fallon Public Library, located in the Metro East, where tubs full of items going back and forth between libraries are delivered by nearly a dozen each day.

“Many of our patrons simply place their hold on their phones [using the library’s mobile app] and wait to be notified when it is filled. The only thing that can sometimes become a learning opportunity for them is wait times,” Samantha Schaeffer, a page at the O’Fallon Public Library, said. “We have to explain to them that the book has to be found by the owning library, scanned in, put into the tubs, go to the processing center and then be delivered to us where we have to process the shipment tubs.”

These traditional collection items can also be found as eBooks, audiobooks, and streaming media in digital library collections through platforms like eRead Illinois, Libby, cloudLibrary, hoopla, Sora, and biblio+, which patrons can access with their library card on a computer and most mobile devices. 

Some can be cast to a TV or have an app on devices like the Roku to launch for the bigger screen. Some platforms also have whole music albums to check out and hoopla is also home to “BingePasses” that check out an entire themed collection of items to a patron in just a single borrow on their account for unlimited access for a week.

Plus a little bit of everything

So then what about that “little bit of everything” that libraries are now offering on top of that? Some of it comes in the form of a “library of things” collection that feature all sorts of items: laptops and tablets, mobile Wi-Fi hotspots (which are now under a separate threat as the Senate has overturned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decision to provide E-rate funding for them to libraries and schools), Roku and Chromecast devices, video games, jigsaw puzzles, power tools, kitchen appliances, fishing poles, telescopes, and even bicycles and kayaks are just a portion of what libraries offer these days.

If you’re a teacher or do homeschooling, there are classroom kits and resource trunks available. Running your own book club? There are book club kits too. Ghost hunting? Check out a kit with an EMF reader, dowsing rods, and digital voice recorder.

Many also offer curbside pick-up or homebound delivery to all parts of the community. Often, this delivery involves a “bookmobile” that is reminiscent of the pack horse librarians of the Great Depression; they carry a portion of the library’s collection out into the community, like an intellectual ice cream truck, and sometimes they have mobile Wi-Fi and laptop access.

Other services are available than just items to check out for free – public computer and Wi-Fi access at the library, printing, copying, scanning, and–yes–faxing.

On top of current newspaper access, libraries have newspaper archives that are digital or on microfilm, digital platforms like HeritageQuest, local cemetery plat books, and other historical and genealogical resources that are free to peruse and use either in-house or online with a library card. Many libraries will also do the research for you.

Are you wanting to write and publish your own book? From RAILS and the Illinois State Library there is a free suite of resources through inkie.org to write and publish an eBook. That eBook can then be read through the entire state and even internationally through Biblioboard Library and the Soon to Be Famous Illinois Author Project. Interested in an in-person workshop? Libraries like the Centralia Regional Library District have self-publishing workshops that will walk you through the process, from idea outlining to marketing your newly published book.

In need of food, diapers, school supplies, dress attire for a job interview (which they’ll also help you prepare for), a prom dress, or hygiene items? Chances are a library nearby does regular drives for each of these and more and provides year-round access to food pantries and hygiene cabinets for anyone in need. Some even partner with national nonprofit PCs for People to donate computers to their community to bridge the digital divide.

In addition to all of these community center-like services, libraries are also continuing to do their regular programming staples in the form of story times, summer reading, and book clubs. Yet nowadays, library programming has expanded to include just about anything from various social clubs and educational workshops to “geek conventions” and dances to art shows and traveling museum exhibitions. Many are also a public polling place, a vaccine site, a notary service, and do other civic events and services.

All of this costs money. According to Illinois Secretary of State Alexis Giannoulias, in 2024, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awarded $266.7 million (less than 0.005 percent of the federal budget) to libraries, museums, and archives across the country. The Illinois State Library received $5.7 million in the fiscal year 2025. $2.5 million of that went to RAILS and IHLS under the System Area & Per Capita Grant program that funds the five-day-a-week delivery throughout the two systems and $1.8 million to the OCLC services that bring global interlibrary loaning to the state of Illinois.

Every year, libraries in the state of Illinois alone save taxpayers roughly $230 million. The allocation of grant money goes into all facets of library operation, from operating costs and upgrades to buildings to interlibrary loan delivery and programming. Public libraries in Illinois must fill out the Illinois Public Library Annual Report (IPLAR) survey each year that tells the state how many items circulated, how many times the computers and Wi-Fi were accessed, how much training library staff and trustees received, and how many people attended programs. This then helps the state decide how much of the grant funding from the IMLS will go to each of these libraries.

The more you use and attend programs at your local library, the more funding they receive, and in turn the more resources and services your community receives. So go discover the power your library card has today and support your local library.

Charessa Sistek is programming and marketing coordinator at the Centralia Regional Library District and a graduate of SIUC’s School of Journalism and Advertising.

The Shawnee National Forest spans 289,000 acres across southern Illinois. Popular destinations like Garden of the Gods, Little Grand Canyon and Pomona Natural Bridge are some of the most frequented in the Shawnee.  

But conservationists and forestry workers are concerned that the regular maintenance of the forest and its future health is in jeopardy after the Trump administration eliminated 2000 probationary employees in February.

Jean Sellar, the co-chair of the Conservation Committee at Illinois’ chapter of the Sierra Club and member of Shawnee National Forest Committee is concerned about the impact of the cuts on the forest’s health. 

“They were already understaffed. They already didn’t have enough people on board to carry out the needed maintenance and care and law enforcement and all of the other tasks that the national forest staff performs,” Sellar said. “And so losing additional employees, especially young ones with fresh ideas is really stupid. The trails won’t be managed as well, the law enforcement won’t be as available. There will be massive problems with invasive species.” 

Steve Ellis, who’s devoted his life to public lands, began his 38-year federal career in the Shawnee National Forest. Now retired and chair of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees, he monitors news about America’s forests. 

“You don’t go in there with a wrecking ball, you do it more surgically, right?” Ellis said. “So I think the question to ask now is: Who’s going to run the place?…and I don’t have an answer…I think that’s a question to ask these people making these reductions.”

The first half of Ellis’ career was spent in the field. Employees that are tasked with managing lands include the biologists, wildlife technicians and timber workers. Often, probationary employees or interns are actively maintaining sites. 

“The majority of the field work is done by the lower graded people and I know that because I was one,” Elllis said. 

A diminished workforce could ultimately affect the outlook of tourism. 

“I don’t think the next couple of years are going to be good for our federal agencies as far as visitor numbers. I saw something last night on the news that worldwide tourism to America is down, like, 18% just for January, just within the Trump administration,” said Charles Ruffner, a forestry professor at SIU. “If we build it, they will come, but if you destroy it, they’re not going to come and see that.” 

Some of the young probationary employees who were affected by the cuts, also are worried. But they aren’t speaking publicly because some who did speak publicly faced discipline.

One student who was affected by the first round of layoffs is a forestry graduate with a deep-rooted love for all things outdoors including hunting and fishing, since a young age. 

“It’s a very interesting time to be in the field of forestry,” they said. “There’s a lot of issues facing forestry as far as dealing with different issues like politics, fire management, and habitat management.” 

The student explained the best avenue people can take to advocate for the protection of public lands and their employees is by reaching out to your local politician and explaining your concerns to raise awareness.

But Rep. Mike Bost, a Republican and U.S Veteran, hasn’t been helpful. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat, suggested that workers tell their story to the press. But Duckworth’s office could not provide any assistance when asked what she had done to help workers who followed that advice and faced discipline as a result.   

Concerns of increased and unethical logging 

Some are concerned that tariffs placed on Canada’s lumber leave national forests susceptible to increased logging because of the need to make up for reductions in timber imports. However, Ruffner said harvesting timber, when done correctly, may be beneficial for the forest’s long-term health. 

“I honest to God think that much of our fire problem in this country is because we have locked up so much of our forests,” Ruffner said. “Cutting a few trees is going to be okay. It’ll grow back. It’s a natural resource, it’s sustainable. If it’s done sustainably, it could be a sustainable resource into the future.”

If ethical logging is practiced, timber sales can also support the economy, he said, and enhanced recreational opportunities. 

Selective logging involves picking and choosing which trees to harvest instead of clearing out an entire zone of land. Ellis, the retired longtime Shawnee employee, also said logging is necessary to prevent fires and for the overall health of the forest. 

“There’s organizations that try to make you think that the biggest threat to old growth forests is a chainsaw and that’s just not, that’s not the facts, not the science,” Ellis said. 

If unethical logging or clear cutting is practiced, large portions of the forest would be left in a state of devastation. This could pose a threat to the forests’ entire ecosystem. 

“I mean it starts erosion chains, it opens a pathway for invasive species. A lot of times they remove good hardwood timber that we really want to have in the forest that supports large numbers of plants and animals,” Sellar said. 

Happening again 

During Teddy Roosevlet’s presidency, he set aside what we know today as our public lands — our national forests and our national parks. Upon forfeiting lands to railroads and industrialization, he saw the need to protect America’s land. 

In 1982, then-President Ronald Reagan proposed a plan to reduce the federal deficit called “asset management.” In this plan he attempted to privatize and sell public lands to the highest bidder. As Trump attempts to reduce the national debt, concerns about the wellbeing and protection of America’s public lands grow stronger.

“This is not the first time this stuff has come around,” Ellis said. “What put an end to asset management? Millions of Americans pushed back and said ‘No, you don’t.’” 

Millions of Americans have the freedom to enjoy our public lands. Unlike National Parks, forests like the Shawnee are one of the few public lands in this country where people can come and go as they please. Whether it’s hiking, biking, fishing, or just parking to take photos, no payment is necessary. 

“Today I can drive out to the Shawnee, park my car anywhere along the road and just go for a 10-mile hike if I want, camp there overnight if I need to. And nobody needs to know, nobody cares,” Ruffner said. 

One frequent hiker and Carbonale native, Shawn Gossman, shares a deep-rooted value for the forest that lies right in southern Illinois’ back porch. 

“The Shawnee National Forest to me is home and it saved my life. Before I got into the outdoors I was on a path of self-destruction,” Gossman said. 

Gossman participates in local volunteer groups like River to River Trail Society and Southernmost Illinois Tourism Bureau. These groups go out to highly traveled trails and clean up trash. 

“It’s gonna depend on volunteers more than anything now,” Gossman said.

The part-time faculty at Columbia College Chicago, where I teach journalism, was on strike for seven weeks, protesting cost-cutting decisions that will result in fewer teaching opportunities for instructors. It was the longest adjunct strike in US history before a tentative deal was reached on Dec. 18.

The student newspaper, the Columbia Chronicle, has been thorough in its coverage of the strike, which started Oct. 30. The students broke the news in November that the adjunct walkout had gone longer than a three-week-long strike in 2022 at the New School in New York, the previous record-holder.

It has checked claims, sought out sources, provided thoughtful explainers and talked to dozens and dozens of students in the murky middle of the conflict over course cuts.

Many of the local media outlets have simply taken the union’s word as fact, citing their numbers and using their hand-picked sources to tell a very complicated story of what is happening in higher education, particularly for tuition-dependent institutions like Columbia College.

In a reporting class I’m teaching, I had the students examine the sources and reporting from two local strike stories, one written by the Chicago Tribune and one written by Block Club Chicago. The students found factual inaccuracies in both, as well as missing viewpoints.

Nonetheless, the union praised and shared both of these articles on social media. In fact, they’ve shared nearly every story written or broadcast about the strike, including one in the Chicago Crusader that was actually a press release from the Columbia Faculty Union’s affiliate, the Illinois Federation of Teachers. They haven’t cited a single article or social media post from the student paper.

That’s because the Chronicle has taken nothing at face value. They have refused to quote claims from the union or from the college administration without attempting to verify them, not easy to do on deadline for students who are only working about 10 hours a week while also carrying a full course load and holding other part-time jobs.

When the union repeatedly touted Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s support – and offer to mediate the strike – a student reporter called the mayor’s office and learned that the mayor never made that offer.

They also broke down the bonuses that administrators had received, exclusively reporting that the college’s president and five others received a one-time payout from the Board of Trustees for weathering the pandemic. 

They’ve done data reporting to understand which course sections were actually being cut, looked at which classes would see the biggest increases, analyzed a $20 million financial deficit and explained how federal mediation works. They delivered this reporting in Spanish and English.

This kind of business reporting is hard even for professional journalists. These are students.

For their efforts, union leaders – who are their teachers – have wrongly accused the student journalists of bias because the Chronicle is funded by the college. (Proceeds from any ad sales go back into the college’s general fund, which supports most student salaries but not all of them because some students are on federal work study.)

Like most student media outlets, the Chronicle is financially dependent but editorially independent. As a full-time professor and the paper’s faculty advisor, I’m not part of the union, which is not to say I am anti-union. I am simply not part of the part-time bargaining unit. I’m also not an administrator, a baseless claim that unfortunately has been used to discredit the students. I don’t rewrite their stories or censor them, another false claim.

I do guide and teach them as a working journalist and a teacher.

Throughout its 50 years of existence, celebrated this fall, the Chronicle and its advisors have had a sometimes difficult relationship with the administration; it comes with the territory. Student journalists are rarely bedfellows with administrators. I know because I, too, was once a student journalist, suspicious of power and power brokers, eager to hold my institution accountable.  

The union has repeatedly claimed that the Chronicle is run by the administration and has used this to counter accurate reporting about the actual impact of the cuts. On a Dec. 10 Zoom call with students that was hosted by the part-time union, a participant noted in the chat that according to the Chronicle’s reporting, the majority of courses seeing cap increases were already fairly large lecture courses and not more intimate studio courses.

The union replied in the chat, “The Columbia Chronicle is headed by the administration.”

This is false, and it’s a terrible insult to the hard-working student leaders who have directed the paper’s strike coverage. 

Much of the local reporting has relied heavily on social media, which has some of the angriest and loudest voices taking part in the conversation. But these voices have not necessarily been representative, which means the easy story gets told by local media and not the more complicated one about how most students have returned to class with replacement teachers or about how nearly half of the striking part-time instructors were teaching as the semester came to an end. 

The exception in the local media coverage was a recent commentary in the Chicago Reader that not only cited the Chronicle’s reporting, it also provided the appropriate context for the strike, noting Columbia’s long history with using (and some would argue exploiting) adjunct instructors. It was sympathetic to the union but also accurate. I plan to point to it as an example of good opinion writing when I teach next spring. 

Throughout the past seven weeks, I constantly have reminded the students that our job as journalists is to pursue the truth, even if people don’t like it, to do everything in our power to get the story right. 

For the past seven weeks, the student journalists have done exactly that, even if many of their peers in the profession have not. They’ve done it in spite of the criticism and the misinformation about their role as independent journalists.

It’s been a tough but invaluable lesson.

Jackie Spinner is the editor of Gateway Journalism Review and a professor at Columbia College Chicago. She became the faculty advisor of the Columbia Chronicle in January 2023.