Natalie Delgadillo: Independence of student publications is critical

Newspapers have one basic job: Report the news, come hell or high water.

Reporting the news can mean different things to different people, but in its most basic sense, it just means writing what happened – telling the truth and holding people and institutions accountable by doing so.

But when a newspaper, or any news agency or company for that matter, is funded or overseen by a larger organization with its own incentives and inherent biases, reporting the news can get a little trickier.

Student newspapers are in a unique position in this regard. While all newspapers have publishers, there’s rarely a reason for them to report on that publisher – but student publications are often published by or financially obligated to the very institution that makes up the bulk of their coverage: the university.

A recent article published in The Guardian outlined a series of cases where student publications’ daily operations were interrupted by the university that housed them. Several of those papers have to seek approval for publication from the student union before running every issue of their paper. The student publication at the University of Leicester was allegedly censored by its student union when the editors tried to run a front-page story about the union’s lack of engagement with the student body.

That’s exactly the kind of oversight that cripples a newspaper, and that comes from the kinds of direct financial ties many student publications have with their student unions or other university entities.

Times are tough for student publications, and the financial support that a university could offer seems tempting on the surface – but being housed and funded directly by the university you cover compromises editorial independence to an extent that renders the publication meaningless.

For that reason, student publications should take every measure to avoid remedying their financial woes through a partnership with the university they cover, and universities should respect the editorial independence of their student newspapers.

Preserving a student newspaper’s independence is worth almost any price: reducing the number of publication days, going online-only, even shrinking staff. These are difficult decisions for publications to make when they’re looking at their budgets, which are undoubtedly facing the plummeting ad revenue that plagues the world of newspapers. But no compromise should ever be made that undermines the basic integrity of the publication, and student publications should actively protect themselves from any attempted overreach by university entities.

The Daily Bruin has none of the troublesome obligations to Associated Students UCLA that many other student publications face with their student unions. But we have faced a threat of overreach in the past.

Most student publications, like the Daily Bruin, fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum – not directly underneath any university entity, but not entirely separate from their university either. The Daily Bruin is published by the UCLA Communications Board, which is an independent board housed under ASUCLA. The board acts as a sort of “buffer” between us and ASUCLA, preserving our editorial independence and allowing our publications to write free of censorship or outside control.

But last winter, there was a blip in that carefully crafted system when ASUCLA proposed a new financial agreement with Student Media, which houses the Daily Bruin, BruinLife yearbook and several newsmagazines.

The original form of the agreement, which offered a $200,000 line of credit to the Communications Board, contained a “trigger clause” that stipulated that if the board failed to pay back the loan in a two-year time frame, the ASUCLA Board of Directors could stack the Communications Board with enough of its own members to constitute a voting majority.

That would have effectively made ASUCLA the Daily Bruin’s publisher. It would remove the buffer that gives this paper its editorial independence and would give the student union essential editorial control over us, with the authority to manage budgets and perform other functions currently managed by the Communications Board, like confirming the appointment of the editor in chief.

I’m not leveling accusations at ASUCLA – a new version of the agreement removed that stipulation after members of the Daily Bruin’s staff expressed their concern over the possibility that ASUCLA could compromise editorial independence. Cooperation between the student union and all of the publications within Student Media is in the best interests of both parties and of the student body generally.

But the events of last winter do give local context to a larger problem – student publications being compromised by the overreach of university entities.

That larger problem is sometimes caused by a newspaper’s inability to financially support itself. Sometimes, it’s caused by an attempted overreach of university officials who may have a vested interest in controlling coverage or who may simply not realize that their oversight fundamentally compromises editorial independence.

Either way, student newspapers have a responsibility to keep themselves out from under the thumbs of university entities and able to perform a newspaper’s most basic function: reporting the news.

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