More than a dozen IU journalism faculty members shared their displeasure after the school's decision to stop printing copies of the Indiana Daily Student.
In an email sent to WRTV by a professor, 19 faculty members signed this letter:
The Journalism faculty at Indiana University are appalled by Chancellor David A. Reingold’s decision to cut the print edition of the Indiana Daily Student hours before publication. This move broke with the Student Media Action Plan, threatened the editorial independence of our student journalists and breached the core values of journalism that we discuss every day in our classrooms.
Indiana University has a long and proud history of student journalism. Our students have done the vital, difficult work of reporting and publishing in a very challenging atmosphere for reporters on campus and around the world. They have weathered many storms, including threats and harassment they received for their coverage of protests on Dunn Meadow. Our students have kept their composure again and again. We are so proud of them.
In order to honor our students, repair trust with our alumni community and restore the long, proud legacy of journalism at IU, campus leadership should produce a complete, independent accounting of the events of the last week and take ambitious, meaningful actions to show their commitment to journalism’s future. This must include a restoration of the printed special editions of the Indiana Daily Student as agreed upon in the Student Media Action Plan. We stand ready to join a conversation about next steps.
The student newspaper at IU Bloomington says the university has fully cut the print edition of the paper, and it will not be on the newsstands starting on Thursday.
According to the IDS, this comes after IU fired student media director Jim Rodenbush on Tuesday.
In a story on its website, the IDS says the media school "directed its editors to only include homecoming stories in its upcoming homecoming issue and no other news." The paper says Rodenbush told the media school he would not tell the paper's editors what to print, calling it censorship.
On the electronic version of the paper's Thursday edition, the front page adorned the word "censored" in a bold, red all capital letters.
