Student Media Culture

An unidentified student or students at American University removed copies of the campus student newspaper after it ran a controversial column dealing with sexual assault.  The Eagle column, by AU student Alex Knepper, argued that feminists who rally against rape are detrimental to  sexual encounters.   "Sex isn’t about contract-signing," Knepper wrote in the piece, which was published Sunday. "It’s about spontaneity, raw energy and control (or its counterpart, surrender)."   Afterwards, copies of the Eagle were removed from several newsstands across campus and replac

Paul Bowers won’t be spending his spring break on the sunny beaches of Mexico; rather, the University of South Carolina third-year journalism student will spend his break in Columbia, S.C. — on the street. His roommate, a fourth-year communications student Matt Wolfer, will join Bowers and together they will document their experiences on the streets for the Huffington Post. Their blog posts can be found at http://www.homelessincolumbia.com/. Bowers and Wolfer originally planned on staying in the streets the whole week, but after getting mugged at gunpoint they decided to shorten the expe

Bucking the trend, funding for the student newspaper the University Daily Kansan will not be cut because of a budget crunch. Rather, the Student Senate Finance Committee (SSFC) is considering cutting funding to avoid appearing to be purchasing favorable coverage from the paper. The committee at Kansas University voted 7-3 to cut funding to the Kansan on Wednesday night. The proposed cut would reduce the media fee by $1.70 per student and would reduce funding to the Kansan by $83,000. That amounts to about eight percent of its annual $1.18 million annual budget, much of which goes to stud

Under a new bill before the Maryland state legislature, student journalists would gain the right to protect their confidential sources’ names and information, a right currently reserved only for "employed" journalists. The bill, proposed last week by Delegate Sandy Rosenberg (D-Baltimore City), raised few objections from legislators and will be voted on later this year, according to University of Maryland student newspaper the Diamondback. Under Maryland's current shield law, only "employed" journalists had the right to protect the identity of their sources and can refuse  to hand o

Despite the recommendation of Virginia Tech’s Commission on Student Affairs (CSA), the University will not pull funding from student media organizations. The controversy was over anonymous student postings on the website of the Collegiate Times, the student-run newspaper of Virginia Tech.   The CSA claimed that anonymous reader comments posted on the Times website violated the University’s “Principles of Community,” guidelines for maintaining civility within the University community. The Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech (EMCVT) in turn threatened legal action should the Univer

Despite having been granted access to 44 H1N1-related death certificates last month, several California counties are denying additional requests for death certificates from student journalists at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism.    The Los Angeles County Health Department refused the records request, saying that they were upholding the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The act, which was passed in 1996, requires the medical records of hospital patients to be kept confidential.   According to Thomas Burke, Partne

Two student journalists at James Madison University have been charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct and non-compliance by the University while gathering news information on Oct. 18. The incident has many arguing that the University violated the reporters’ First Amendment rights. Tim Chapman, editor-in-chief of JMU's The Breeze, and Katie Hibson, a contributing news writer for the paper, have a hearing scheduled for Nov. 5 with the University's Judicial Affairs. Hibson went to a campus dormitory, Hillside Hall, to interview students and investigate a trespassing incident t

Students with  Northwestern University’s Medill Innocence Project are battling with the Cook County state’s attorney office over a subpoena for off-the-record interviews in their investigation of the conviction of Anthony Kinney. The Medill Project lawyers are using the Illinois Reporter’s Privilege Act to defend the students, arguing that while the interviews were part of a class project, the students were nonetheless acting as journalists.  The students were investigating the case of Anthony Kinney, a man convicted of killing a security guard in Harvey, Illinois in 1978.   T