How student journalists can help save universities — and journalism

As universities struggle to survive the ongoing political assault on higher education, student journalists offer a way forward that cuts through the muddied responses springing up at universities across the country. They also remind us what about journalism is worth saving.

Nearly 35 years of teaching undergraduates who hope to become journalists have given me two main insights: One is that aspiring journalists have lots of original ideas about how to cover complicated stories. Fresh out of classes teaching them to provide the fullest and most truthful account of what’s happening, most know they need to be resourceful and creative to meet the bar.

Two is that undergraduates studying journalism expend boundless energy to get the facts right. Unimpressed by the slick excuses, irrelevant sidebars, implausible rationales, and other distractions displayed by too many administrators of universities in strife, most student journalists know to bypass them on their way to finding more accurate, fair, and reliable information.

I saw this when Penn’s student journalists covered the difficult stories of former University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill’s resignation, the ensuing student protests and encampment over the Israel-Hamas war, police activity on campus, federal and state funding debacles, and shifting university responses.

While most of these events unfolded, my classroom was filled with staffers of Penn’s student-run newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, who were covering Penn’s turmoil in between class sessions.

Their devotion to craft turned our time together into discussions of the challenges they were experiencing, making class feel like it was ripped from the headlines.

The multiple awards Penn student journalists received — first place for multimedia story of the year from the Associated Collegiate Press, first place for ongoing coverage of the university encampment from the Keystone Media Awards, and third place from the Associated College Press and College Media Association Pinnacle Awards — show that others felt similarly. In a time of university disarray that put student journalism across the country to the fire, the Daily Pennsylvanian came out on top.

I’ve gained a third insight from my other role as founding director of the Annenberg School’s Center for Media at Risk. When I established the center right after the 2016 presidential election, I saw it as a place to strategize responses to the political threats and intimidation being leveled increasingly against media practitioners and scholars.

Though I anticipated the center’s timeliness, I had no idea how many people, communities, and contexts would soon be experiencing the dangers of a political environment that uses coercion against them at will.

Those topics we’ve engaged with at the center include mob censorship and journalists in exile, women suffering from digital image-based abuse, and documentary filmmakers impacted by war. Each revealed that most people care deeply about media at risk, and understand what gets lost when the media are diminished.

Undergraduates studying journalism expend boundless energy to get the facts right.

The relevance of student journalists to this moment is clear. One Daily Pennsylvanian staffer, also an undergraduate fellow with the center, said it best at an event about media research and practice in contentious times.

Admitting that being both a student and a member of the press right now raises new ethical dilemmas and an “urgent need to reevaluate how we cover certain events,” she shared that “as university administrators across the country redefine what open expression is allowed to look like on campuses, responsibility has fallen onto student newsrooms to advocate for their press freedoms while protecting their staffers’ safety and security.”

Penn’s student journalists have met unprecedented challenges by creatively adapting long-standing newsmaking conventions. Threatened with disciplinary action or denied access to public space, they camped out in large numbers on College Green to ensure the DP would miss nothing.

They skipped graduation and end-of-year celebrations, but came to morning classes having worked through the night.

They developed new conventions better suited to current conditions — protecting protesters by showing only images with unidentifiable faces, or allowing reporters to publish their pieces anonymously.

They produced live blogs, breaking news coverage, and in-depth analyses to counter disinformation while accommodating diverse perspectives.

They rethought how to do journalism when journalism is at risk.

Rethinking journalism makes it possible to deliver a steady stream of truthful and accurate information when it’s most essential. Journalists in national and international news outlets, many of whom have forgotten what independent journalism should look like at this moment, might pay closer attention. Student journalists can help remind them why they chose journalism in the first place.

The unthinkable events of the past few years on university campuses tell us we should give student journalists more opportunities to be heard. Both universities — and journalism — can benefit if we do.

Barbie Zelizer is the Raymond Williams Professor of Communication and director of the Center for Media at Risk at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. She is the author of the forthcoming “How the Cold War Broke the News: The Surprising Roots of Journalism’s Decline,” out in September.