Indiana University’s Media School will launch a journalism program this fall for students to cover underreported topics in Southern Indiana. The Indiana Newsroom will allow 15 students per semester to work directly with student and professional news organizations, starting with Indiana Public Media, according to a Monday news release from IU Today.
Media School associate professor Suzannah Evans Comfort said the program is a collaboration between her, Media School Director of Development Emily Harrison, Indiana Public Media and the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County, which provides philanthropic support for Bloomington’s community. She said students will receive hands-on mentorship and paid opportunities while gaining professional experience.
The idea for The Indiana Newsroom emerged from a local news summit co-hosted by The Media School and the Community Foundation in fall 2024, Comfort said, which brought together local journalists to discuss how to support the news infrastructure for Indiana.
“It was pretty clear our journalists around here, local news organizations, really want to keep doing things the way they’ve been doing it,” Comfort said. “But at the same time, they really want more support, particularly from the university and from our students.”
The program will operate using a content-sharing model, similar to the Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism, with students producing news in partnership with local news organizations.
This approach is designed to expand news-making capabilities in the region without competing with existing outlets, Comfort said.
“This is meant to be adding capacity to our local news ecosystem, not reproducing news that’s already being made,” Comfort said. “In particular, we’re interested in the newsroom focusing on underreported topics or underserved communities.”
Funded by a two-year, $300,000 grant from the Community Foundation, the program will be housed on the second floor of Franklin Hall.
Comfort hopes to employ up to 15 student reporters per semester, with students able to return each semester, alongside a visiting professor of practice in community journalism, who will serve as founding director of the lab. All positions and travel for students and pay for the professor of practice will be covered by the grant.
Students will start by taking a new three-credit community journalism course, available in the upcoming fall semester. After their first semester in the program, students can qualify for $15 an hour by daily news reporting five hours a week, Comfort said.
The new course will focus on journalism in southern Indiana, helping students get to know the institutions, people and figures involved in events and issues in the region.
In the past year, more than 136 newspapers have closed, leaving around 50 million Americans with limited or no access to reliable local news sources, according to Northwestern University’s Medill State of Local News Report 2025.
Michael Arnold leads WFIU/WTIU as IU integrated public media executive director. He also currently serves as interim director of student media, which includes the Indiana Daily Student, IUSTV and WIUX. Arnold said the program addresses the nationwide challenge facing local journalism.
“There is kind of like a trend across the country of students helping to solve the journalism crisis in communities,” Arnold said.
The Media School is currently seeking applicants for the visiting professor of practice position, with a March 6 deadline. The position requires at least five years of local journalism experience and a dedication to serving rural communities, with a goal to work with funders and grow the project beyond the two-year pilot period, according to the job posting.
As the program’s first partner, Arnold said Indiana Public Media will work with students on daily news gathering projects during the first semester.
“What this allows is for students to provide more coverage of certain areas that maybe a local news organization can’t do,” Arnold said. “They’ll be able to sort of cover some gaps with that.”
Other news organizations will be invited to join as partners as the program expands, Comfort said. Students interested in learning more can reach out to Comfort directly.
“I hope that not only will it succeed in serving our local news ecosystem, that it will also succeed in helping us recruit more journalism students because we need more journalists,” Comfort said.
