I agree completely with your indignation at the UM-Rolla situation. And I used to agree with your suggestion that Clemson is doing the right thing by giving up student fee funding.

We are a private 501(c)(3) corporation publishing the student newspaper at Univ. of Oregon, and we receive student fees equal to about 13% of our total budget.  The fees we receive are considered a bulk subscription for the student body in exchange for free distribution on campus. In fact, we sign a contract with the student government stipulating that arrangement.  

It would make life so much more pleasant if we rejected those fees and the fee hearings that accompany them. But subscription revenue is a legitimate source of income for any major newspaper.  And if we had to give up those fees, it would make us entirely dependent on advertising (a dangerously declining source of revenue for the past several years)and require us to drastically cut back our budget, forcing us to consider fewer staff positions, smaller papers, tighter newsholes, or other measures.  

By giving up that $25,000 in student fees, I wonder if Clemson had to make similar choices.  And if so, isn't that allowing the student government to wield the same power as if they had denied the funding in the first place?  

As a financially-independent (and financially-struggling)student news organization, we shouldn't have to choose between having our funds cut or voluntarily giving up those funds. I've come to realize the problem isn't the fact that we receive student funding. The problem is the means by which that funding is determined and the misguided notion that student government (or administrators) can use those fees to try to control the student press.

It's gratifying to see SPJ take a leading role in the important effort to remind college administrators and student governments of "the value -- the necessity -- of a free press".

Thanks so much for speaking up, Judy. I hope your comments will help launch an insightful and helpful discussion about the funding of college media.

I tried to start a similar discussion in June 2005 in an edition of "SPJ Leads," the Society's weekly e-mail newsletter. We ran comments from Phil Kadner, a columnist for the Daily Southtown in Chicago, and asked SPJ members to share their thoughts and suggestions for change.

Wow! Was I blown away with e-mail! At the time, I didn't have an easy outlet for sharing those responses with the membership at large, but now, through this blog, I do. I have saved those messages for almost two years because I have known they provide valuable insight that might help student news organizations thrive in the face of funding challenges.

All I ask is for folks to remember that these messages were generated in 2005 ... I'll first post Kadner's comments and follow up with the responses received.

Written by Phil Kadner of the Daily Southtown in June 2005:

Here's my problem with this entire matter: Why would journalists ever argue on behalf of government-funded newspapers? That's usually what we're talking about in these situations since the newspapers are funded by state universities whose administrators feel, with some degree of justification, that they should have pre-publication review over the content.

If newspapers are privately funded, or operated beyond the bounds of the university setting, even private institutions would have a difficult time making the case that they can interfere with the First Amendment rights of students.

I understand that many student newspapers rely on student fees administered by public universities, but perhaps we should be making the case that these publications should try harder - with the assistance of SPJ - to become independent. Instead, we end up making the more difficult (and I would say questionable) argument that the school administration must publish material that is embarrassing to the administration and sometimes damaging to the university's reputation.

On a common sense level, this has got to confuse both the public and members of the judiciary.

Written in 2005:

Christine,

I too believe, as Mr. Kadner does, that college newspapers should strive for independence. However, in reality, I know of one newspaper that would simply cease to exist without student fees: my alma mater's.

I'm a graduate of Northwestern State University of Louisiana, based in Natchitoches, a rather small and rural city. The city's only other newspaper is a weekday paper, with the vast majority of its content being wire and letters written in by area residents; its reporting is so thin that the college urges its students to seek internships anywhere but at the Natchitoches Times. More local news is broken by two Gannett newspapers located more than 50 miles away -- and, notably, by the campus newspaper, the Current Sauce.

The $3 it collects from students each semester barely covers its printing costs, and in such a small city, there's not enough room for two papers to solicit advertisements. Even with the small size of the Times, the Sauce's all-but-volunteer business staff has never been able to compete; ads last semester were negligible, most of them national ads at a cut rate. Even subsidized by thousands of student dollars, the paper barely eked out four- and six-page editions, often with little over 50% of the content news.

Printing costs keep rising, and with the university instituting selective admissions next year, student fees for all organizations will take a hit. While the paper could take quite a few steps to keep limping along - moving from broadsheet to tabloid, reducing staff scholarships - a ruling like this will only give university administrators already eager to be rid of campus muckrakers an excuse to end student funding. At a small university like Northwestern State, that would kill off the only media outlet in the city that's not completely under the thumb of local businesses or allied with local government.

Independence as a newspaper would be nice, sure. But it's a luxury the Sauce can't afford, and unless the SPJ doesn't mind fronting some $30,000 a semester, it will fold after it's 90-odd year run, as I'm sure quite a few other small-town college papers will as well. Those that can become independent will become stronger and be able to teach students more about the business of journalism; the rest - well, let's just say I can suggest a good Web host that's a lot cheaper than a single press run. Independent campus journalism in small markets will die in print and have to find a way to survive online with students who aren't trained to work the Internet - which may be a silver lining, considering how commercial print publications are moving towards the 'Net, and how online journalism is largely ignored by Northwestern State and some of its small-town kin.

~Garrett Guillotte
Northwestern State University of Louisiana graduate, 2004, B.A. in Journalism
Editor, the Current Sauce, Fall 2003

SPJ member Ariel Hansen wrote in 2005:

If college newspapers don't report on what's going on at the school, who will? Who else cares as much? I also don't understand how a college newspaper publishing something embarrassing or potentially
reputation-damaging could be confusing to the public, which *ought* to understand that the newspaper is journalism, not a collegiate mouthpiece.

And that should certainly apply to the judiciary.

My suggestion would be to fund the papers not from a college's general fund, but from a fund filled either by the administration with non-state funds or by the alumni. I imagine that at most universities, enough alumni either are journalists or support the journalistic endeavor to at least partially fund a paper.

Colleges should remember that the student writers and editors are not professionals, they're learning to be journalists. If they expose something bad at a college and write about it, that's a good education!

Ariel Hansen

Kala Goriup wrote in 2005:

As a recent graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I have had the opportunity to experience university newspapers under both conditions--university funded and private funding.

From the perspective of a student, I will have to admit that the university funding places the student paper, and those that work there in a seriously compromised position.  Though, many university newspaper editors would argue the point, it is a very difficulty to cover a university as a reporter if you are taking money from them.  The coverage is lukewarm at best, and outright restricted in the worst cases.

Though I have never seen the administration at the last university I attended outright censure the newspaper, it was always apparent that there were some areas of coverage best left alone.

In comparison, in my younger years, I worked for a Universtiy paper that was self supporting.  The reporting was lively, aggressive and often challenged the administration.  I recall very clearly how the Dean of Students said he dreaded to pick up our paper each morning, because he knew he was likely to have a heart attack.  Since the publication was able to maintain its independence, coverage of the University, the campus, and even state and local government was pursued aggressively.

Yet I know that some university communities simply are not able to support a student run newspaper.  Generating that kind of advertising revenue is not an easy feat.  What I did not see was cooperation between the business and advertising students that I had experienced before.  What is most distressing is that a student publication is viewed as the only for he communications students.

They forget that the newspaper industry is a business.  Tap those resorces at the university and the publication will improve immensely.  What all journalist hate to face, is that if you can't make money, then you will be beholden to the funding institution.

Kala A. Goriup
Honolulu, HI

Clayton Woullard wrote in 2005:

Hey Christine,

At my college newspaper, The Metropolitan (Metropolitan State College of Denver), we receive little to no direct funding from the college. About 70 to 80 percent of our newspaper's budget comes from advertising revenue with the rest coming from student fee money, money that comes from a giant student fee called the Student Affairs Fee. The school collects more than $2 million from that fee (from a student population of more than 20,000), which is allocated to different student services and departments by the Student Affairs Board. One of those departments is the Office of Student Media, which houses the newspaper. As far as I know, our paper gets very little money directly from the school's administration.

The easiest way to go about this is to have a good advertising manager/team. Your newspaper staff should get to a point where it can survive off advertising alone. Most school newspapers, college and high school, are able to do this. I know some college newspapers are set up as a class, meaning somewhere they get money from the school. If you're having a problem with administrative pressure, see if you can set up the newspaper as independent from the school.

Also, I think it's great to have some of your budget come from student fee money because students are your audience and who you should be serving anyways. Some college newspapers have had trouble, namely the University of Northern Colorado. Their newspaper, The Mirror, sued UNC's student government for closing meetings where they discussed cutting the newspaper's budget. Luckily, the paper won, resulting in a five-year contract that removes the student government from making funding decisions about the newspaper.

One would hope a college newspaper or its staff wouldn't have to take legal action for independence and freedom of the press, but it's a last resort. If need be, you can sue your school if they try to censor you, or go to your legislature and propose a law that would protect student journalists. In Colorado, for example, there's a law that protects high school journalists from being censored and ensures their independence.

Really, the key is advertising. It's the one tangible way your newspaper can gain independent revenue without trying to completely overhaul the financial structure between your paper and the school.

If you need help on how to gain advertising revenue, visit the College Newspaper Business & Advertising Managers' website at http://www.cnbam.org/main.cfm to start.

Take care,

Clayton Woullard
News Editor
The Metropolitan

In 2005, Carmen Reynolds wrote:

As a former editor in chief of a student newspaper within the last two years, I can tell you we struggled just to get funding from the university to survive.

Student Gov’t (which held the majority of the purse strings) was PO’d that we weren’t on their same sheet of music (we were watchdogs – imagine that) and because of some bad blood prior to my tenure, they had cut the funding even further.

The head of our department did everything he could do to help us survive. I wrote and applied for 4 grants – one of which was approved – but only for $150.  Duh.

Then, when I came in and turned things around and improved the relationship with the SGA, they still wouldn’t increase the funding to the school newspaper. Instead, they (SGA) cut it again. Yes, this is a good argument about independent financing. However…

Not to be negative, but how a student newspaper can support itself would be even a more difficult challenge than the current funding situation that most are in now – which is out of student activity fees – controlled by student gov’ts, and/or the respective university dept. which oversees it.  Selling subscriptions wasn’t really an option.

We operated with old/obsolete down equipment that inevitably crashed in the middle of production cycle. Murphy’s Law.
In light of the recent 7th Circuit ruling, this is going to make things even more challenging in order to preserve press freedoms.

--Carmen Reynolds

In 2005, SPJ member Pierce Presley wrote:

I just read SPJ Leads on this issue and would like to give you my views.

First, some history: I arrived at Loyola U. New Orleans in August 1996, and joined the campus newspaper, The Maroon, almost immediately. My second semester I was an assistant editor and was on the editorial board in various capacities until graduation, including a semester and a half (long story) as business manager.

For the entire time I was at Loyola, The Maroon was funded by a hodge-podge that included an appropriation from the College of Arts & Sciences budget, a slice of student fees granted by the Student Government Association, and advertising revenue. So if the SGA or the dean wasn't happy with us, and they rarely were, we could see funding cuts. Luckily the ad revenue was enough to keep things going during the year, but A&S would claw back most of any surplus left at the end of the year.

The paper also had many outdated, inefficient, and expensive technologies, and had a contract with its printer that was subpar at best. (The contract was the worst: it had been negotiated when the school was one-fifth the size it was when I was there and could be updated on the printer's end without recourse.)

Being a reform minded person, some like-minded friends and I came up with a plan to thoroughly modernize the paper by increasing the 1960s-era editor stipends, updating and buying more computers, putting in a modern network, getting bids on a new printing contract, moving to full pagination, starting electronic delivery to the printer, updating the ad rates and getting the sizing in line with industry practices, and freeing the paper from its tangled web of financial sources (and from being a cash cow for the university).

In financial matters, there were several steps. The Maroon stopped depositing ad revenue into the university accounting system, there being no reason nor requirement to do so and the glacial pace of the system meaning it could be the end of a semester before the money from the beginning was available, establishing a business account at a local bank. We ended up staying with our printer, but with a much better deal (thanks in part to electronic delivery, which meant we bypassed the camera department and saved time, too).

The remaining problem, the mish-mash of financing, was resolved according to my plans but after I had left. I thought it best if the paper not receive any university money, instead relying on our main audience, the students.

A $15 student media fee was introduced and now, along with ad revenue, provides all financial support. The paper's charter was also re-written, officially incorporating the paper's independence from the university administration. (Another problem was that the university had retained a veto power, which we told the administration, several times, exposed it to legal liability. Luckily the last time the university president used it, he was almost immediately removed under suspicion of molestation--long ago when he was at a high school--and the paper used the incident to push through the changes. Again, sadly, I was already gone.)

I'm not a legal expert, but those I asked seem to think the end-around fee structure insulated us from the university enough to prevent problems with first amendment issues. Also, we did calculate that we could live on ad revenue alone, but barely. As it is, the paper has a robust revenue stream that allows it to keep up with technological changes, pay editors a decent stipend for their time, fund travel and registration to journalism conferences, and much else.

While I did a lot of work I was very proud of (including a profile of a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist he said--and wrote in a recommendation letter--was better than profiles done by The Washington Post and The New York Times; not bad for an Arkansas kid at a small, private Louisiana school), I think that getting The Maroon in the financial situation it's now in and gaining its freedom from the university and student government will be my most lasting achievement there.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Pierce Presley

In 2005, Mike Thoele sent this message:

My feeling is that college newspapers are yet another campus laboratory where students are exposed to experiences that replicate what lies ahead in life.

The conventional rules of academic freedom — the rules that permit a professor to make a controversial statement or a student to write a controversial paper or a scientist or social researcher to promulgate unpopular research results — should apply to the newspapers as well.

Mike Thoele
Publisher
Junction City OR

An SPJ member who asked to remain anonymous sent this message in 2005:

As a former college newspaper advisor I write to tell you the "financial ties" have even more sinister and covert implications.

With the funds often come faculty "advisors" who may be denied tenure or teaching assignments if they don't "properly advise" student editors dealing with sensitive stories which portray college administrators in a negative light. Even tenured advisors may be reassigned  and replaced by more administratively pliable junior faculty seeking tenure.

I am aware of one circumstance where the collective bargaining contract required the advisor be a communications/journalism professor so the president of the college simply created an administrative position, a student media manager to oversee all student media including broadcasting and cablecasts. The media manager works directly for and answers to the president of the university without peer review by the communications/journalism faculty.

In our instance the media manager position was created when the president decided to fund a student media center bringing all the student media together in one location with new equipment ...and the president's media manager.

What are we teaching our students about an independent press?

SPJ member Judith Epstein wrote in 2005:

I think part of the crucial learning process that goes on in college is learning to have one's own thoughts and opinions, not those of one's parents, teachers, or even significant other.  As such, I think it is important for students and student publications to enjoy the benefits and responsibilitiies of free speech.

There is another rule of adult life that's important to learn,too:  namely that "He who pays the piper calls the tune." (Most kids already know that one anyway.)

But who is really paying the piper?  In this matter, there is a distinction hidden in your question that must not be overlooked.  Distributed student funds should  NOT be confused with university or government subsidies.  If a paper can truly be said to be funded only by students -- even if it's student money that has been taken and re-distributed by the administrsation -- then I don't believe the university can be said to be funding it.

Follow the money, indeed, right back to its source -- and see where you end up.  There lies at least part of the answer.

In 2005, Mark Porter of New Jersey wrote:

As an SPJ member and the editor of a large weekly newspaper, I support freedom of the press.

Student publications reliant on collegiate funding -- i.e. student fees -- are university publications that should be governed by university oversight.

In New Jersey, a student "newspaper" published on one campus of Rutgers University has a decades-long legacy of printing uncensored student essays and photographs that are repugnant and offensive.

As a Rutgers student in the 1970s, I briefly worked as a reporter for this campus "newspaper." I quit after recognizing that the student leaders of this publication had their own X-rated and narrowly polemical agenda and were not receptive to objective journalistic features about the community in and near the campus.

Decades later, this same publication has made statewide headlines several times in recent years for printing X-rated images and fictitious ads and articles that denigrate women, African-Americans, Arab-Americans, gays, Jewish-Americans and other blocs and cultural entities.

Reacting to denunciations from state organizations that represent these cultural entities, and to the outrage of fellow students attending New Jersey's largest university, the student editors claim their offensive presentations are "satire." The student editors maintain that their university-financed "newspaper" possesses the same unrestricted freedom of the press that professional newspapers have cherished through the centuries.

Some NJSPJ members adhere to the same polemics. They also argue that the student staffers publishing humiliating fakeries of real students are merely "finding their way" in journalism.

Editors of any publication must possess fundamental knowledge about the mechanisms needed to sustain the publication. College students who oversee a university-funded publication that is distributed across an entire campus must possess enough maturity to know that publishing anti-Semitic cartoons or libelous slurs of fellow students is not acceptable.

Other NJSPJ members, fortunately, argue that this student-run, university-funded publication doesn't possess the same freedom-of-the-press stature as an independent publication, whose success or failure depends on the support of readers and advertisers.

These NJSPJ members adhere to the same point made in the SPJ newsletter by Chicago Headline Club member Phil Kadner: "Instead, we end up making the more difficult (and I would say questionable) argument that the school administration must publish material that is embarrassing to the administration and sometimes damaging to the school's reputation. On a common sense level, this has got to confuse both the public and members of the judiciary."

School-funded publications must be overseen by faculty members. The faculty members must be held accountable for the material they approve in the student-written publications.

Obviously, a student investigative expose of a school's administration with funding anomalies is different than writing and publishing humiliating "parodies" that denigrate entire groups of people. The faculty advisor, along with the student editors, must chart the publication's path, and be able to justify the substance of the printed material.

As editor, if I allow racist, homophobic or pornographic material to be printed by my editorial staff members on the pages of the newspaper I oversee, then the publisher or the owners of the media corporation will fire me.

Accountability must be assigned to the faculty members who oversee school-funded publications. If the faculty advisors approve materials in school-funded publications that humiliate cultures or religions, then they must be held responsible and accountable to the school.

Yours,

-Mark S. Porter-
Member, New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists

In 2005, George Beres of the University of Oregon wrote:

Christine:

College newspapers need to be independent from universities whose
policies and behavior they are supposed to examine, then place in the light of public scrutiny.

Advertising revenues are a step in that direction, but not adequate.
Seems to me they should receive directly from students the portion of the annual student fee that eventually comes to them from the university administration. That fee should be assessed separately, and go directly to the publication.

George Beres
at the University of Oregon

In 2005, Melissa Rothermel was managing editor of The Rebel Yell, which serves the University of Nevada Las Vegas. She wrote:

At UNLV, we are still partially funded by UNLV, but most of our funding comes from advertisements. This works very well. If it did come down to a censorship from the administration, I would move to be completely funded from advertising.

This is just scary because it seems a bit risky. I would not want to go that way unless I had to. I would be interested in others' ideas for funding a college paper.

Melissa Rothermel
Managing Editor, The Rebel Yell

Matt Milner wrote in 2005:

When I was in college, the paper was run and funded by the Student Government Association. The paper received a budget from SGA, not the administration.

That allowed us to do things to tweak the administration when they deserved it. At one point SGA got so fed up with the president's antics that we turned the editorial page into a double-truck and ran pieces from half a dozen cabinet members. We also mailed copies of that issue to the curators. I can't see an administration allowing that if the paper accepts funding from the school itself.

There were downsides. The editor was selected by the SGA president. There was a tendency to put a friend or a flunky in there. I survived because no one else had the knowledge of page layout and editing.

If students might be willing to accept higher student fees in exchange for an independent newspaper, it might be a solution.


Matt Milner
The Ottumwa Courier

In 2005, SPJ member Nathaniel Polster wrote:

Newspapers supported by student fees co-mingled with other funds are still newspapers made possible by non-institutional funds, and therefore deserve First Amendment protection against censorship.

Students interested in this topic should use existing appeal paths, if they exist, to confront administrations with this approach.

If the administration refuses to comply, or if there is no existing path for appeal, then studentts need to figure publication costs (an educational project) and design ways to withhold the fees that cover the costs.

This may require some public appeal to all students paying fees; may require some nonviolent demonstrations of protest, might require contacts with local commercial newspapers to encourage running stories and photos of events, or may relquire other forms--trustee contactts, etc,—of pressure on the administration.

Nathaniel Polster

In 2005, Garrett Guillotte followed up his initial response with this message:

Thanks for sharing my thoughts with SPJ, and for your response. I'm certainly in the "real world" of journalism now, but I still have many connections to NSU. I feel like getting a good bit about NSU's j-program off my chest.

I know all too well about university "media boards," although NSU's minimized even the student element of it. NSU's student media leaders - the newspaper editor, radio station GM, yearbook editor and literary journal editor - have to be approved by the student senate, and candidates are "recommended" to the senate by a media board, which includes two students appointed by the student government, the student government president, the heads of the Department of Language and Communications and College of Liberal Arts, and a representative of the university administration. Candidates are required not only to provide the usual qualifications, but also submit a list of students who they plan to hire to subordinate positions, such as section editors and a business manager - presumably, to prevent a preferable candidate from putting bad apples into positions of power on student media staffs.

The student media board debates and votes on these candidates behind partially closed doors. Everyone but journalism and English department faculty and a select few others, depending on the candidate or situation, are ejected from the room, and no minutes are taken (or at least released) of the closed-door debate. Specifics are kept secret; this process hasn't been successfully, or really rigorously, challenged, as the board only recommends and does not directly select student media leaders. However, the student senate, as far as I understand the student constitution, can only vote up-or-down on candidates recommended by the media board, and they very rarely vote against a media board selection, as doing so would be voting against the administration's and department's wishes. Furthermore, a vote against would require the media board to meet again and choose a candidate again, and as this frequently happens near the end of a spring semester, such a new selection would be delayed until late summer or fall, which would leave a student medium "headless", so to speak, during the summer - making for potentially sticky budget situations that the senate would rather not deal with.

As far as greater student media independence, I think SPJ is certainly right to keep an eye out for universities' overt attempts to censor and control campus publications, as per the 7th circuit's unfortunate decision. However, from my own personal experience, I'd also take a long, hard look at the faculty who advise student publications, and what actions they take to recruit students to student media. The worst damage that awaits student media that are dependent on college faculty and facilities, I imagine, will come from universities placing lackeys into advisory positions, who then dissuade student journalists and recruit PR students to train them to be watered-down, I'll-take-no-for-an-answer-please lazy "journalists".

If the SPJ wants to help student media gain independence, they need to drive some possibly difficult-to-swallow points home to student journalists:

1. Don't trust anyone who has to report to a university administrator. The brave advisors who will stand up against pressure at the cost of their jobs are outnumbered by those who would place tenure or promotion above education. Add a second layer to the tin-foil hat if those advisors have PR backgrounds - yes, I know it's not fashionable to trash PR professionals anymore, and many of them are, or would, make good journalism teachers and advisors. But I haven't met one in person, and I've directly dealt with PR-minded educators who have nothing but the university's good image and recruitment numbers in mind. Student journalists have to stay independent, and that's hard to do when someone who claims to be an absolute supporter and advisor suggests publishing an one-sided, one-sourced article by one of their PR class students, who's taught in that PR class that it's okay to change quotes in a press release to make it "sound better".

2. Do something independent. Take the skills learned from working with dependent student media and start something - anything - a photocopied flyer, a Web site, a podcast, a public open-mic debate, anything that doesn't rely on university funds or property. A taste of independent student-driven media, and the freedom it provides from faculty oversight, is addictive, and will push students to do, learn, and accomplish more on their own.

3. Seek help from outside sources, even when you don't think you need it. The Student Press Law Center was invaluable throughout my student journalism career, whether I was seeking advice when student government obstructionism, facing threats of libel lawsuits, or dealing with faculty-sponsored staff and budget sabotage; the SPJ's resources, and our excellent SPJ adviser, helped me navigate everything from covering crime to FOI to learning basic skills outside of the curriculum. Many students I worked with would go to the newspaper advisor, teacher or department head for help, then stop there - never knowing that the plan of action they were given was poorly devised or inaccurate, if not downright unethical. Pro journalists aren't afraid to ask for help, and certainly shouldn't be afraid to ask for a second opinion. Student journalists need to know that people aren't born with a BS filter - it just comes from smelling so much of it and recognizing it as such.

4. Don't be afraid to freelance. A student-pub clipfile is nice - so nice that many students I worked with relied exclusively on student publication clips to get internships and jobs. But even one small, but solid, freelance piece in a professional publication could have moved that student to the next level. And I can guarantee that there isn't a college in University of Louisiana system that teaches a single thing about working as a freelancer - even though there's many a journalist who, at least between jobs, has done some freelance work. The experience with the business end of being a journalist is invaluable, and there's no school that can veto or edit a story written on a student journalists' own time and effort. Not to mention that it can pay for a lunch or two, sometimes.

Again, thanks, for putting up with my ranting. :) Hope this offers some insight from someone not long out of the college training wheels.

~Garrett Guillotte

I attend school and work in campus media at a public university in Missouri, and upon taking a look at the Miner's online site, I can't see why backing their case is going to benefit us.

First, Rolla is an engineering school, and sadly grammar is not their first priority.  Complaints made by Rolla students about the Miner wound up sporting the same spelling and conjugation errors the Miner's published.
Second, the "story" that likely riled up their Student Council (http://themissouriminer.com/content/view/365/49/) was a piece in their news section that read more like the author's personal commentary on proposed cuts, including first-person statements.  I was taught in my earliest journalism classes this wasn't acceptable.  Another story on their site mistakenly assumed that the Student Council was offering a new class when they merely passed a resolution supporting it.
Third, reports on message boards frequented by Rolla students suggest the paper's apparent mismanagement and unwillingness to improve.  Among other claims made on the boards these stand out: writers leaving staff because editors drastically changed their story around on more than one occasion, copy editors told only to check for punctuation instead of glaring inaccuracies, people not receiving pay for their stories, a Miner staff member destroying copies of an upstart publication.

I don't see this as being the right fight to pursue.  The Miner's glaring problems need fixing and should be top priority through different funding and academic channels, not through the court.  If the Miner staff takes this case too far, I have sad reason to believe that the court that imposed Hazelwood on us will have (on a silver platter) reason to apply that same decision to colleges across the Midwest.  Unless I am convinced that protecting free press goes above any glaring ethical improprieties and gross misspellings, I cannot in good faith support this lawsuit.

Thanks for writing, K.Hill.

Just to clarify:

No one at SPJ has said anything about backing this newspaper's lawsuit -- even if that suit comes to fruition. You're right: Ideally, the paper's funding and its problems will be addressed in a forum other than a court of law.

I know this is going to be hard for some people to wrap their heads around, but here it is: Poor grammar, misspellings, a penchant for running articles written in the first person -- and even inaccurate reporting and ethical misconduct are NOT good enough reasons for a university to yank its funding for a student newspaper.

Are those big problems that need to be addressed? Absolutely. But that's the point: They need to be addressed through instruction -- not budget cuts -- because a student newspaper is a training ground where plenty of mistakes will be made for some of the dumbest reasons imaginable (News flash: Said stupidity also happens in student news orgs on campuses not so focused on engineering -- and in "pro" newsrooms. Don't get me started ...) Any institution that says it's committed to delivering this kind of education should put its understanding and tolerance where its mouth is.

All of this brings me back to the funding issue. I'm not at all convinced that the fate of student news organizations needs to rest in the hands of other students -- particularly students who are routinely covered by the student news orgs. There has to be a better way to fund campus media.