'A lot of fear': Indiana University cuts student newspaper's weekly print product

Editor’s note: The Indiana Daily Student’s co-editor-in-chief for the fall semester, Marissa Meador, served as an intern at The Herald-Times in summer 2024 . She declined to provide comments on this story for this reason.

The Indiana Daily Student (IDS) will no longer produce a weekly print edition starting in spring, the Indiana University Media School announced on Oct. 8 .

IU’s editorially-independent student newspaper since 1867, the IDS has seen several cuts to its print product in recent years, dropping from five times a week to twice a week in 2017 and moving to a once-a-week publication in 2020.

The Media School announced the change as part of its “Action Plan for Student Media” . In addition to reducing the IDS print schedule to only “special editions” throughout the year, the plan seeks to merge the IDS, the student radio station WIUX and the student broadcast station Indiana University Student Television (IUSTV) into a shared business operation and “multiplatform learning lab.”

Under the proposed model, the organizations will maintain their individual staff and newsrooms, but share some centralized advertising, business and recruitment operations. The Media School also reportedly will bring on two to three new graduate student workers to assist in expanded operations.

Staff at the IDS told The Herald-Times the action plan was originally slated for publication on or after Oct. 9, when Media School Dean David Tolchinsky had scheduled a meeting with student media leaders. IDS leaders said they learned of the plan early through Media School faculty , and began writing an article in response, prompting the school to publish early. Co-editors-in-chief Marissa Meador and Jacob Spudich said they were able to tell some people in the newsroom early, but many learned about print cuts through the Media School’s release.

“I definitely wish we were more in the loop about this process, and that’s a feeling that’s been shared,” Spudich said. “I think there’s a lot of frustration, a lot of disappointment, a lot of fear, especially in the newsroom, but there’s definitely a feeling of resilience as we move through this.”

‘We’re going to do everything we can to make sure we keep print’

The action plan is the apparent conclusion of a monthslong back-and-forth between the Media School’s dean and student media leadership about how to make student media at IU – particularly the IDS – sustainable amidst a mounting budget deficit.

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It comes months after members of an ad-hoc committee of student media-affiliated students, faculty and notable alumni were tasked by Tolchinsky with crafting recommendations for how to make student media at IU more sustainable in the long-term. The committee’s recommendations were submitted to Tolchinsky in April.

“Student media leaders and others collaborated throughout last year on a set of recommendations, which significantly shaped the actionable plan,” Tolchinsky said in a statement.

Most elements of the plan drew from the committee’s recommendations, including a shared business model for the three organizations. That idea was first proposed by Jim Rodenbush, the IDS’ director of student media, in 2018. The plan also adopts recommendations like creation of an umbrella student media mobile app and restoration of internal IU advertising expenditures for student media.

But it notably declines to pursue recommendations like instituting a $6 mandatory fee for IU students to fund student media and increasing professional staff across organizations. Most notably – and unexpectedly – it called for a further reduction in the IDS’ print schedule.

Rodenbush said while he’s optimistic about the adoption of a shared business model, he’s disheartened by the Media School’s choice to cut print.

“The paper part is a bit of a punch to the gut,” Rodenbush said. “Just as excited as you can be about new ways of moving forward, this was still a tangible product that we put out there, and that people invested in, and that got read.”

Spudich said while he and Meador feared a reduction to the print schedule was possible as a cost-cutting measure, they were surprised and disappointed to find it in the action plan.

“We feel the print edition is a vital part of the IDS,” Spudich said. “We were really hoping and fighting – and are still fighting – that we don’t have to get rid of our print edition.”

In an article responding to the action plan, IDS leadership said they were still exploring options to preserve the weekly print product, including potentially funding it through donations to the IDS Legacy Fund .

“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure we keep print,” Spudich said.

‘To take away our print edition is a form of censorship‘

Spudich said although there’s some excitement in the newsroom about the Media School’s action plan, he’s been disappointed in the school’s response to the committee’s report and has serious doubts about the plan leading to financial solvency.

The IDS accrued an approximately $900,000 deficit over the past three years. Even as Tolchinsky announced $1 million in debt forgiveness for the paper earlier this summer, and the action plan detailed a strategy to cover the IDS’ debt for a “three- to five-year implementation period,” Spudich said without increases in direct funding from the university, the paper will continue to face financial trouble.

“Print part aside, it does not give us any optimism towards how the media school is attempting to try to figure this out for the three organizations,” Spudich said. “We don’t feel that this report that came out is a proper response to the ideas and concerns that were expressed in the initial report.”

Jack Paley, executive director of IUSTV, said while his team was initially concerned by the plan and how it might change IUSTV’s operations, he’s optimistic about the shared business model and continued communication with Media School leadership.

“We are excited for the opportunities this will bring in terms of collaboration between more student organizations,” Paley said. “It is going to affect students later down the road, but I think it’s incredibly exciting, and we are happy to give any input we can into this process.”

The action plan comes just two weeks after Indiana University Radio and Television Services’ (RTVS) executive director and chief financial officer were fired from their positions – departures that were attributed to personal matters and “morale issues.”

Rodenbush said though he understands changes like this can prompt fears of censorship or undue influence from the IU administration, he emphasized the IDS’ financial issues are long-standing and part of a larger industry trend in declining newspaper revenue.

“In six and a half years, I have not been aware of any attempt at the university level to administer any form of censorship with the student paper,” Rodenbush said.

Spudich, however, holds a different perspective. Though he doesn’t view the plan as retaliation to any one action, he believes any university-ordered reduction to how people read and access the student newspaper constitutes censorship.

“To take away our print edition is a form of censorship,” Spudich said. “The specifics we’re still not sure about, but it is a form of censorship.”

Still, he assures readers the IDS’ coverage will remain the same.

“Our coverage is going to, Marissa and I feel, get better throughout the year,” Spudich said. “We’ll continue to provide essential coverage to the community, with or without the print.”

Reach Brian Rosenzweig at brian@heraldt.com . Follow him on Twitter/X at @brianwritesnews .

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: 'A lot of fear': Indiana University cuts student newspaper's weekly print product