An unabridged version of this article was originally published in the Student Press Report, a national news desk covering student media and journalism education in higher ed.
Andrew Frazier expected to spend his senior year as the sports editor of The Vista, the student newspaper at the University of Central Oklahoma.
Instead, he became editor-in-chief of a new student-run publication, The Independent View, after his university said printing The Vista wasn’t worth the $12,000 annual cost. (UCO’s operating budget in 2024-25 was about $177 million.)
When donors offered to cover the expense and the university still said no, free press advocates shouted censorship. They said the UCO students were being punished for factual reporting that didn’t frame the university in a positive light.
“(This) raised serious press freedom questions for us,” he said. “Without a clear digital transition plan, the move felt less like modernization and more like retaliation, which is why we chose to build something independent.”
The cover of a recent Independent View issue.
Across the country, student newsrooms are facing a similar squeeze: shrinking budgets and increasing pressure from the universities that fund them.
Student press advocates say those forces — financial strain and institutional control — are reshaping campus journalism and, in some cases, threatening to destroy independent student media.
Silence is the point
The Student Press Law Center, a 51-year-old nonprofit that defends and advances student journalists’ free press rights, said it’s seen an alarming uptick in calls over the past few years. (The Student Press Law Center is a funder of the Student Press Report.)
“Censorship has always been our No. 1 reason why people reach out to our legal hotline,” said Gary Green, executive director of SPLC. Calls rose 42% from the 2022-23 school year to 2024-25, he said.
One of several instigators of that surge was the March 2025 detention of Rümeysa Öztürk, an international student at Tufts University, after she wrote a pro-Palestinian op-ed in The Tufts Daily. That and other immigration enforcement actions in spring 2025 sparked panic — and self-censorship — among sources and staff members.
In April 2025, SPLC issued a first-of-its-kind student media alert, urging students to “revisit their policies on takedown requests and anonymous sources, particularly for those whose immigration status may make them targets for their lawful speech.”
Student Press Law Center executive director Gary Green speaks at the SPLC 50th anniversary celebration at The New York Times in October 2024. (Photo by Ryan Murphy)
Across the country, conflicts between universities and student newsrooms have followed familiar patterns:
- Students started their own independent publication at the University of Texas at Dallas after the school removed newspaper racks, demoted their adviser and fired the editor-in-chief.
- Students at the University of Central Oklahoma created their own independent news publication after their print budget was killed and editors were stripped of decision-making power.
- The University of Alabama shuttered two magazines that officials felt might conflict with federal DEI rollbacks.
- Morgan State in Baltimore made an official policy requiring students, faculty and staff to run all interview and filming requests through the university’s public relations office.
- Staffers at The Exponent newspaper at Purdue got a surprise email from the university stating that after a 50-year relationship, the university would no longer partner with distribution efforts on campus.
But the biggest student media news of 2025 came from one of the most awarded, respected student newspapers in the country.
In October, Jim Rodenbush was fired as director of student media at Indiana University after he refused to enforce an administrative mandate: no news content in the printed homecoming edition.
IU Media School dean David Tolchinsky wrote in Rodenbush’s termination letter, “Your lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the university’s direction for the Student Media Plan is unacceptable.”
Rodenbush said he believed enforcing the directive would amount to censorship and refused to do so.
“Because it was the right thing to do,” he said. “I feel like there’s a responsibility to maintain standards and ethics, particularly in student journalism, because this is the future of the profession.”
Indiana Daily Student co-editors in chief Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller address their newsroom staff after the university fired student media director Jim Rodenbush and canceled the print production of the IDS. (Courtesy: Indiana Daily Student)
University officials disputed that characterization. Chancellor David Reingold said the decision was unrelated to editorial content and stemmed from personnel and budget considerations. Rodenbush has filed suit alleging violations of due process and free speech.
Advisers say the case illustrates how fragile student newsrooms can be when universities control the funding. “A lot of student media are in the red, and really at an existential crisis,” Green said. “They’re relying more and more on university subsidies, and universities, in many cases, are pulling their subsidies.”
Universities may eliminate funding entirely or reduce it gradually over time, he said. If cuts are tied to coverage, that raises constitutional concerns, but proving it can be difficult.
Running on empty
“Gutted,” “eviscerated” and “absent” are some of the words student media leaders use to describe their operating budgets since the 2008 recession.
“We’ve lost entire categories of advertisers, we receive less revenue from our digital products than our print newspapers could bring in, and it’s much harder to compete with Google and social media platforms for new dollars,” said Chrissy Murray, CEO at Duke Student Publishing Company/The Chronicle.
Student journalists working inside the offices of The Duke Chronicle. (Courtesy: Chrissy Murray)
Some outlets have tried to replace lost revenue with fundraising, memberships and side projects such as creative services. But many remain financially fragile.
A 2024 study by the University of Florida’s Brechner Center for the Advancement of the First Amendment found that more than half of student news outlets receive direct funding from their universities, and nearly 60% are advised by university employees.
That dependence can create tension.
“Financial ties to the institution can be problematic for student journalists for several reasons,” the study noted. “Students who challenge the wrong person in administration are vulnerable to lose funding for their student press if there aren’t several safety guards in place.”
Lead author Jessica Sparks, now a professor at Auburn, said the concerns she wrote about two years ago seem even more pressing now.
“One of the biggest things that clicked for me… was the idea that there’s no such thing as a truly independent institution in this realm,” she said. “Instead, what we’re looking at is, how vulnerable are you as a publication to the pressure or censorship? And what can you do to mitigate that vulnerability?”
Other data underscores how sharply the business model has eroded. An analysis of nonprofit student newsrooms found advertising revenue — once the dominant income source — fell from 91% of revenue in 2006–07 to 52% in 2022–23.
Student media now faces structural disadvantages, said Bob Buday, one of the researchers: high student turnover, university administrators cutting their funding, and a lack of best-practice research that keeps U.S. companies humming along.
“College media has not had the same thing,” he said. What successful student media often does have, however, is strong professional leadership, he said.
How to stay alive
At The Duke Chronicle, a housing site and robust fundraising have helped the paper stay afloat.
“(Student media) has lost a ton of revenue in the last 15 years because of print,” Murray said. “So few of us have refilled those buckets with other things, or we did it at a lower level. Now we’re at a point where we’re not sure if those buckets are going to hold in the economic downturn and what comes next. Then layer onto that the reader habits of undergraduates. … Finding our audiences is going to be really complicated. And I don’t know how many (college) news organizations are up for that challenge.”
Murray said newsletter and fundraising efforts have become increasingly important. Duke’s fundraising now makes up 30-35% of its student media’s annual operating budget.
Some outlets are also rethinking how they operate. At the University of Illinois, Illini Media reorganized its systems and business model, cutting outdated processes and focusing on sustainable products and partnerships.
“When your newspaper or news outlet is 150-some years old, there’s a lot of stuff that you do because you’ve always done it,” said Illini CEO Jake Williams. “And we really spent the last two years breaking as much of that down as possible and making sure that everyone had a clean path to just do what they were here to do.”
Partnerships have been key for some organizations. Gerald Johnson said Texas Student Media, once losing about $250,000 a year, has been profitable for more than a decade after investing in events, partnerships and new ventures.
“If you’re not making money and you’re a strain on your campus, there certainly is the opportunity for more conversations about, ‘Why are you still here? Maybe you should go away,’” he said. “I think our stability has created some protection from those conversations.”
Others emphasize diversifying revenue wherever possible.
“Student fees can vanish in a second, grants can be fickle, donors don’t always come through,” said said Piper Jackson-Sevy, co-founder of Flytedesk, a campus advertising network. “The long-term financial health for student media means a healthy balance of several income sources.” (Flytedesk is a funder of the Student Press Report.)
Student journalists Nina Kudlacz, Emma DeShon and Izzy Lewis on the field at Memorial Stadium at the University of Nebraska before a Huskers football game in 2025. (Courtesy: The Daily Nebraskan)
At the Daily Nebraskan, advertising partnerships with other campus departments have become a major source of revenue, said general manager Allen Vaughan.
“The newsroom is the essence of everything that we’re doing,” he said. “We’re just trying to figure out how to fund it.”
Why student newsrooms matter
College newsrooms are a unique American institution, places for students to experiment, explore careers, find friends and mentors, and test their leadership skills.
“From day one, you’re bonding with people from literally all walks of life, in a really cool space doing great work,” said Murray of Duke. “So it’s this mission-driven kind of environment, but it’s also just fun. I’m showing my bias here, but I don’t think that there are leadership positions that have quite this much power in any other place on campus.”
For some advisers, the fight to protect student media is personal.
Community college — particularly the student media experience — was transformative for Sarah Bennett, a former student journalist who is now a professor of journalism and media studies at Santa Ana College in Southern California.
“I didn’t have stable housing, I didn’t have parents really around. Guidance was not there in my upbringing, in my life, and Bud (Little, former Santa Ana adviser) was really the first adult and male figure in my life that was positive and healthy,” said Bennett, who has advised student media for the last 10 years. “I wouldn’t be where I am if it wasn’t for him, and I see so much of myself in my students.”
El Don adviser Sarah Bennett (center) works with students at Santa Ana College. (Courtesy: El Don)
Steven Chappell, a newspaper adviser at Northwest Missouri State with more than 30 years of experience, said he wants his students to understand their role in fighting back when democracy is under attack.
“The foundation of democracy is a strong media. And a strong media starts with strong student journalists who are excited about going into the field of media,” he said.
Some students are feeling empowered to fight back.
Lindsie Rank, director of campus rights advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said that seeing the headlines about protesters, journalists and others standing up for their rights can be inspiring for students.
“But, honestly, I’m afraid more students are scared into silence rather than empowered by the current climate,” she said. Student journalists often worry about retaliation even when advocates are ready to help.
A rounding error worth fighting for
Universities subsidize athletic programs, transportation, housing, the arts and lecture series, the SPLC’s Green said. Student media should not be an exception.
“The amount of university funds supporting student media in many cases accounts for no more than a rounding error in the overall budget,” he said. And it’s a critical institution.
“Student media plays an integral role in our media ecosystem,” he said. “It’s the pipeline for the future of journalism. People need to have a better understanding of the challenges of student media, and the more we get that news and information out to a broader audience, the more support we can cultivate for the great work the student journalists, their advisers and their faculty do.”
The Daily Illini editorial board at a recruitment event in 2026. (Photo by Sarah Slattery)
Williams, at The Daily Illini, said that while censorship and money are two huge issues facing student media, he thinks student media practitioners — both students and professionals — need to think bigger and holistically about the role they play in society.
“Yes, let’s focus on the tactical. How do we stay in business? That’s very important,” he said. “But also we need to be able to come together and say, ‘This is what we’re doing, and we’re here for this purpose,’ because the threats are only getting bigger.”
Correction, Monday, Feb 23 (4 p.m. Eastern): An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of a former University of Texas student media director. His name is Gerald Johnson, not Johnston.
