This past week, Indiana University’s Media School fired its director of student media and ended the Indiana Daily Student (IDS) print medium. For the first time in 158 years, the Indiana Daily Student will no longer be printed. 

The IDS, Indiana University’s student newspaper, has historically been in debt. While the IDS makes around $600,000 each fiscal year, from 2021 to 2024, the deficit reached nearly $1 million, an amount paid this summer by the Media School.

Partly informed by the goal of implementing a more sustainable financial model, a committee of students, alumni, faculty and staff recommended in 2024 that the IU Media School’s three operations, which include the IDS, IU Student Television and WIUX student radio, merge. 

The merger comes in addition to previous cuts to the IDS’ printing schedule, including limiting print editions down to only special editions. 

In a Letter from the Editors on April 18, 2024, editors Nic Napier and Salome Cloteaux said that after the university’s substantial cuts to staff, printing schedule and revenue opportunities, “There is nothing left to cut without substantially changing the IDS.”

While IU’s choice to end print editions was certainly influenced by budget constraints, it doesn’t seem to be the only factor, as the decision reportedly didn’t allow the IDS team to retain full editorial control over their remaining print coverage. Media School Dean David Tolchinsky also told IDS editors on Oct. 7 that “administrators expected ‘that edition should contain nothing but information about homecoming — no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage.’” 

The impediment to print editions reflects a larger concern for college journalism. The ultimate goal of the newspaper is to share news (go figure). In some respects, the news is a business (something we are forced to confront as we stumble through coordinating advertising in The Wellesley News!). But when concerns about profitability outweigh those of coverage and access to the news, there’s a problem. 

The notion of a free press is often considered in purely theoretical terms. Having a free press can be as basic as having reporting that is being done, uncensored. However, the practical aspects of access are often overlooked. For example, the growing number of outlets whose reporting is hidden behind internet paywalls limits, in a very tangible way, just how free we can say our press is.  

The news environment today is fraught with reporting that makes it harder to get the information we seek. Scrollable sensationalized coverage and national headlines muddle facts and make it all too easy to miss the stories that affect your local community. Social media’s ever-growing position as a primary news source for readers lessens the imperative to seek out other news sources, or even to read a full article. 

College journalism is vital for a number of reasons. Most obviously, it is news. It’s news by and for the hyperlocalized community: its students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and neighboring population. For its student reporters, it offers hands-on experience for those pursuing a career in journalism. It amplifies student voices, preserves institutional memory and holds colleges accountable.

A college paper has intrinsic value to its community, and in this current news climate, we should be even more cognizant of the reasons we consider limiting access to news in any form. 

At Wellesley, community members who might not read The Wellesley News online see it in Lulu, in Sci or in Founders. Professors who mention the News often read it because it catches their eyes outside their offices and classrooms, or they enjoy reading a print newspaper. It isn’t an indictment on the reader or the paper itself to say that the convenience of a print newspaper is one of the reasons to print a paper at all. The print newspaper is not a superfluous element of a bloated journalism program, but a crucial element of access. 

As colleges nationwide, including Wellesley, face increasing pressures to maximize profitability, cutting arts and humanities while prioritizing STEM, the lesson from Indiana is clear: when college journalism is treated as a business, the public loses out.  

College journalism is not a business; it is a service.

Contact the editor responsible for this story: Galeta Sandercock