This story has been updated.
For the first time in 158 years, Indiana University will no longer print the Indiana Daily Student.
Media School Dean David Tolchinsky announced Tuesday night that campus leadership decided to end print editions starting this week. The word came hours after he fired Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush.
After IU paid off nearly $1 million in debt for the IDS last year, it created a Student Media Plan that ended weekly printing to curb its deficit (original proposal below). The IDS was still permitted to publish special themed editions, such as one planned this Friday on homecoming.
Rodenbush told editors in an Oct. 7 email 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."
An exception could be made for copies of the IDS distributed off campus, he added.
Read more: IU announces student media merger, cuts newspaper
Rodenbush said leadership first gave him those directions at a September meeting.
"I am in a position where I can tell my editors that this is the thing that's been said to me," he said. "But then, whatever they want to do is whatever they want to do."
Tolchinsky told Rodenbush in a letter published by the IDS that he was being fired for his "lack of leadership" and unwillingness to stick to the Student Media Plan.
Student media at IU have lost full-time staff positions regularly over the past seven years.
"I began with eight, counting me. Three of them left for other positions – they weren't fired, they just left because they got jobs elsewhere – but none of them were replaced," Rodenbush said.
IU has not said yet whether it will hire a new Director of Student Media. The position is promised in the university's charter with the IDS.
Rodenbush said he wasn't expecting to be fired yesterday when Tolchinsky summoned him to his office and read his letter of termination.
"Every meeting in the past year regarding this new plan, hurdles have been discussed and progress has been discussed, and it's never it never became a matter of, 'You're not doing this correctly,' until I began to push back on this specific thing," he said.
Students were not part of those conversations. IDS Editors-in-Chief Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller retain editorial control over their paper, per the IDS charter.
"We had heard almost like rumors that we would soon be directed to stop publishing news in our print paper, but Oct. 7 was kind of the first official thing in writing we received," Hilkowitz said.
Miller said media school officials never spoke to them directly, despite their efforts.
"We tried," he said. "Whenever we've brought up the issue of the special editions, it's kind of been danced around."
They described IU's directive as censorship.
"We are not stuck up on print," Hilkowitz said. "We're stuck up on the fact that the media school is trying to dictate what is good for business with what we publish."
Neither Media School nor Bloomington campus leaders have responded to requests for an interview, but an emailed statement sent on behalf of Chancellor David Reingold said ending the print paper was a purely financial decision.
"To be clear, the campus' decision concerns the medium of distribution, not editorial content," it said.
Journalism professors disagree. WFIU/WTIU News asked Interim Director of Journalism Suzannah Evans Comfort whether IU's mandate was in line with media ethics.
"Of course not," Comfort said. "You can't have journalism without editorial independence, and I think that our leadership here knows that. I'm not suspicious that they are censoring a specific news article or a specific subject. They know that's a bright line."
She cautioned against drawing conclusions about IU's motivations.
"We don't have all the facts yet, because this is still developing, as you know," Comfort said. "It's very important to me as a faculty member that they (students) continue to do what they've always done. At the same time, I understand that we can't allow them to continue building up debt."
The IDS says its three print editions this year have brought in more than $11,000 in ad revenue.
"It's going to cost us advertisers. It's going to cost us our main revenue source," Hilkowitz said. "So, the fact it's being framed as a business decision is irrational."
Student media organizations WIUX and IUSTV have both issued statements opposing Rodenbush's firing, as has the IU Student Government. Free speech organization FIRE said in a statement sent by spokesperson Alex Griswold that "IU's allegedly retaliatory firing of student media director Jim Rodenbush is patently unconstitutional."
The IDS will continue to publish news online.
WFIU/WTIU is affiliated with the Indiana University Media School. The Executive Director of WFIU/WTIU also supervises the Director of Student Media position.
WFIU/WTIU News maintains its editorial independence.
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