I made the mistake of trying to be proactive on Monday, so when my doctor asked, “Would you like your flu and pneumonia vaccines?” I said, “Sure, why not?”

Three straight days of nothing but the shakes and 14-hour sleeping fits later, I’m relatively functional and ready to try to catch everybody up on what’s been going on with the IU Media School, the Indiana Daily Student and the censorship of the student media in Bloomington…

 

JOURNALISM KIDS DO BETTER: The title of that famous book rings so true when it comes to this situation. The students at the IDS were prohibited from printing their homecoming issue, as the IU Media School didn’t want “news” in it.

Well, that wasn’t going to work…

The students took to the web and posted the entire issue you weren’t supposed to see here and promoted the hell out of it.

If the school was afraid that regular news was going to make the homecoming issue seem “icky” for the alumni coming home to IU, they probably pooped in their knickers when they saw this:

 

YOU MESS WITH ONE OF US, YOU MESS WITH ALL OF US:  One of the things that IU Media School Dean David Tolchinsky has yet to fully understand is that student media is a family. We might pick on each other or battle it out for awards among ourselves, but when someone from the outside picks on one of us, they have to deal with all of us.

This sense of camaraderie was perfectly captured in the Purdue Exponent’s reaction to this situation:

In short, not only were there papers on the stands, they came from the folks in West Lafayette. And, of course, this drew even more attention to the situation from the outside… 

If, as fired adviser Jim Rodenbush said, Tolchinsky is learning about how media works in “baby steps,” he better get a faster baby because the student media is kicking his rear all over the place.

 

FROM THE “FOXES TO STUDY IMPROVEMENTS TO HEN HOUSE SECURITY” DEPARTMENT: Tolchinsky popped his head out of his burrow on Monday and apparently saw his shadow, thus revealing six more weeks of catching grief over this.

Therefore, he released the following statement about his intention to create a task force to study the situation:

Indiana University Media School Dean Dave Tolchinsky announced today the formation of a Task Force on the Editorial Independence and Financial Sustainability of the Indiana Daily Student (IDS)/Student Media. The new initiative will bring together faculty, staff, students, and alumni to develop recommendations ensuring both the editorial independence and financial sustainability of student media at IU.

The task force, to be appointed in the coming weeks, will build on prior work—including the 2024 ad hoc committee’s “Proposal for Reimagining and Reinvesting in Student Media at IU.” Its charge will extend beyond that report to develop recommendations on the intersection of editorial and business operations as IU’s student media organizations progress toward financial sustainability.

So, to review, the guy who just fired the adviser, cut print and censored the student newspaper is building a committee to study those issues at IU.

The jokes just seem to write themselves at this point, but to a lot of us, this is no laughing matter.

IT’S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL THE LAWYERS GET INVOLVED: One of the best things about student media is that the folks here have a lot of what I call “Big Friends.” It’s basically like life in grade school or high school: Some twerp comes along and picks on a perceived weaker kid, only to find out that the kid has a really big friend, ready to come to their defense and kick the crap out of said twerp.

Enter the Student Press Law Center.

SPLC’s is “devoted exclusively to defending and advancing the free press rights of student journalists. For more than 50 years, we’ve helped students and their educators navigate the law, strengthen their reporting and stand up for press freedom.”  This has been a lifesaver for an infinite number of student journalists and student media outlets.

The SPLC provided us with a pro-bono lawyer for nearly 18 months when we were fighting to get records released about a professor who was removed from his classroom at UWO. They also gave us legal representation in Indiana when the university was trying to keep public documents private. They even rattled the chain of the little… um… student government people out here who tried to get me fired.

If you talk to anyone who has been in student media for more than 20 minutes, it’s likely they have a “SPLC saved my bacon” story to tell.

SPLC folks are like a dog with a Frisbee. They don’t let go. If you are getting a lot of attention from SPLC, it means you’re really in the wrong. So, what do you think it means when SPLC creates an entire section of its website dedicated to tracking and cataloging the stupidity of your media school?

Yeah, not good.

In addition, the students at the IDS are working with an attorney from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, who has issued a demand letter to Tolchinsky and his merry men, stating the school needs to start acting right: