This is an audio transcript of the Weekly News Rundown
Annabel Prokopy: It’s Monday, Oct. 20.
Nate Soco: This week, we are joined on the show with the co-editors-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student, Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller, to discuss recent breaking news regarding the IDS. On Tuesday, Oct. 14, Media School Dean David Tolchinsky terminated Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush. Rodenbush was fired after refusing to tell the IDS that no news could be printed in the upcoming newspaper, scheduled for Oct. 16, after being directed by the Media School to do so. According to Rodenbush, telling the IDS not to print news would be censorship and “literally against the law.” A termination letter sent to Rodenbush on Tuesday afternoon said that he was fired due “lack of leadership and ability to work in line with the University’s direction for the Student Media Plan.”
AP: That’s right Nate. Hours after Rodenbush was fired, Tolchinsky sent an email to the IDS fully cutting the printed edition of the paper. The email came after the IDS contacted the dean to rescind the previous directive to not print news in Thursday’s paper. The dean attributed the decision to “the campus.”
Mia and Andrew, we’re excited to have you on the show today for a discussion about this week’s events and what they mean for student journalism. Thanks for being here.
Andrew Miller: Thanks for having us on.
Mia Hilkowitz: Thank you so much.
N: All right, let's get into it. So despite the firing of Rodenbush and the cut to the paper, IU Bloomington, Chancellor David Reingold said in a statement that, “Indiana University, Bloomington is fully committed to the free expression and editorial independence of student media the university has not and will not interfere with their editorial judgment.” You disagreed writing in your second letter from the editors, released on Wednesday, that cutting print is a “breach of editorial independence.” Can you tell listeners more?
AM: Yeah, so I would go back to the original issue of what Rodenbush originally got fired for, which was telling us to not put news in the newspaper. He originally was fighting back against the directive of The Media School that we should only print our special editions. So for those unfamiliar, these are tiny, like usually inserts into our normal paper. So you would see news on page one. The Media School had directed us, and this was relayed by Rodenbush to us that we were not to print news in the newspaper, only as special editions. Okay, past that, so Jim is fired after he refused to direct us not to print the news, and then the media school, hours later, cut print entirely to us, that's a reaction. It's a very clear reaction. I mean, they didn't cut print as a business decision by coincidence while we were already working on it. And so, I think that the main thing here, and you're right, it's editorial independence. Because if The Media School can use an irrational business decision like it was in the first place to justify telling us what we can and cannot print, then they can use an irrational business decision in the future to impact our website, our social media, our coverage in general, so that's the main issue.
AP: So you've had previous conversations with the Media School administration expressing concern about potential cuts to print. With the budget coming into these discussions this week, you disputed the role of the budget in this issue, and you said that your past three print editions have generated over $11,000 in profit. What more do you know about this?
M: Yeah, so what I'll say here is, Andrew touched on it a little bit earlier, but The Media School is framing the entire cut to print as a “business decision.” This is an irrational thinking, because we can point to our first three issues of the semester that showed $11,000 in profit, and we're not denying that the Indiana Daily Student's deficit is a problem. We started going into a deficit before Andrew and I even got here. That started in 2020 if we want to find genuine solutions to the deficit, to making more money, into making the Indiana Daily Student profitable, however, it makes no sense at all that they would cut a print publication that was making us money, in fact, that's going to increase our deficit. Andrew’s noted it before, but when we had the immediate cut to print, we lost so many advertisers. We had a lot of advertisers lined up, delivery drivers lined up. The cut to print is going to have so many negative business impacts on us. So to frame this as a decision to decrease our deficit is irrational and, I think, purposely misleading to people.
N: Okay, so our next question this week, the IDS published two letters from the editors addressing Rodenbush's firing and the cut to the paper. You both additionally participated in interviews with news agencies across the country. It's clear that people are talking about these events, and we'd love to hear more about how reactions have been both on and off campus.
M: Yeah. So we've been really lucky that we have seen an outpouring of support from people both on campus and off in the wider Bloomington community, the IDS serves a very, very important role of filling a news desert. We are the remaining free print publication in the area. We have a very, very high, we had a very, very high pickup rate of our newspaper and in the broader Bloomington community. So people are really upset about that. They're losing a major news source. Additionally, we've had a lot of alumni, not only of The Media School, but IU overall reach out and say, ‘Hey, this is ridiculous.’ This is clear, blatant censorship and expressing their support for us and (they are) threatening to withhold their donations and funding for IU. And I know one big example of that was Mark Cuban, who is an IU alumni, who reached out about that. He reached out to us. And he also posted on his X, saying that censorship isn't the way in expressing his upset with the situation.
AM: I would just add two things. So number one, the reaction from other student newspapers, honestly, well, in Indiana, specifically, and around the country, has been really cool. To see the Purdue Exponent deliver their own edition that republished our letter in it, and I mean, that was just amazing. And what I'm starting to understand is that people view an attack on one student media organization as an attack on all of them, and I'm glad that they're paying attention. The other thing is, I want to mention our staff, who have been wonderful, incredibly supportive. Our managing editors pretty much picked up all of our slack this week, and I think that it's really, really galvanized the newsroom into doing the good work that got us here in the first place.
AP: Before we wrap up, you wrote a powerful statement at the end of your first letter to the editors released on Tuesday. “Who is this supposed to benefit? It's not the IDS, which now risks having our future journalism censored. It's not our reporters, editors, photographers and designers who will have the fear of censorship for doing the right thing looming over them, and it's not you, our community, who will face another barrier to reading our journalism when it matters more than ever.” You also said in your letter on Wednesday that you will, “continue to resist as long as the university disregards the law.” Where do you see this going from here?
M: I think our reporters, our editors, our entire staff, is going to keep doing the really great journalism that they are known for. IU might have removed a platform for it. They might be trying to stop more people from seeing it in the broader Bloomington community, but all this has done is raise even more attention to the impact that the IDS has. Our reporting is going to remain being extremely accountable toward administration, even if they are trying to silence us. Earlier, you referenced a statement from IU saying that our editorial independence was being respected, and that's being respected. Quite frankly, we'll believe it when we see it, and we hope that they come to the table ready to show us that they are going to respect it.
AP: Well, Mia and Andrew, thank you for joining us on the Weekly News Rundown today.
M: Thank you so much for having us.
N: For updates on these developing stories, visit idsnews.com.
