This story has been updated to add new comment from the IU administration and additional context throughout.
Indiana University has ordered the Indiana Daily Student to end all print publication less than 24 hours after the administration fired an adviser for the student newspaper.
“The Media School thinks they can violate the First Amendment if it’s under a business decision,” said Mia Hilkowitz, co-editor-in-chief of the IDS. “That’s a really, really dangerous thought process for administrators to have. The fact that they’re trying to frame clear censorship as business is so disrespectful to every party involved.”
In recent weeks, university leadership, the student media director and editors at the Indiana Daily Student have fought over what content gets printed in the student newspaper, with administrators insisting that “special editions” were not to include any news content. The IDS content still publishes news on its website.
The situation escalated Tuesday when IU fired Jim Rodenbush, director of student media, as he pushed back against a directive to remove news content from the print edition.
“I was terminated because I was unwilling to censor student media. 100%,” Rodenbush said in an interview Wednesday morning. “I have no reason to believe otherwise.”
Citing financial difficulties and a new business action plan instituted by IU’s Media School, the IDS reduced its print production last January to seven times per semester. After a spring semester under this structure, leadership began pushing for those newspapers to be special editions focused exclusively on themed content, such as homecoming, fall sports and Thanksgiving.
The paper was scheduled to publish its fourth edition of the semester Oct. 16.
Spokesperson Mark Bode said in an Oct. 14 statement that the campus is shifting resources to prioritize digital media over print while addressing the publication’s financial deficit. In a follow-up statement Oct. 15, IU Bloomington Chancellor David Reingold reiterated the student media business plan and said the university will not interfere with editorial content.
“Indiana University Bloomington is firmly committed to the free expression and editorial independence of student media,” Reingold said in a statement. “To be clear, the campus’s decision concerns the medium of distribution, not editorial content.”
Legal expert: Poor financials don’t justify censorship
The IDS has dealt with severe financial issues over the past five years. In 2021, it was allowed to run a deficit for three years, and by 2024, it had grown to over $500,000.
Though the IDS sits in a precarious financial position and receives university dollars, Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, said it does not give the university a license to control its content. He said the university’s attempt to control what goes into the paper constitutes “blatant censorship.”
The student publication is protected under the Public Forum Doctrine, he said. Once a government entity such as a public university establishes a designated public forum, such as a student newspaper, he said, it’s up to those who use that forum to use it as they wish.
The university can cut costs for content-neutral reasons, such as a widespread budget cut, Hiestand said. However, previous court decisions have deemed it unconstitutional for universities to use the power of the purse to force a student publication to bend to its editorial will, he said.
Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller, IDS’s other editor-in-chief, told administrators in a previous email that the printing and advertisers have already been contracted for the fall semester. They argued that disrupting print is counterproductive amid financial difficulties, since it has generated $11,000 in profit over three editions this semester.
“The ads were sold, we got the dummies, we were working on the pages already,” Miller said. “We still intend to publish a virtual paper, and to blast it everywhere.”
Administration sought no news in print
Rodenbush said he first recalls Galen Clavio, the Media School’s associate dean for undergraduate education, mentioning in “casual conversations” that some administrators expected the special editions to exclude news content during the spring 2025 semester.
But it wasn’t until the IDS published its Sept. 4 and Sept. 10 print editions, which included stories on the university suspending the Palestine Solidarity Committee and IU ranking as the worst public university in the nation for free speech, that administrators asked to meet with Rodenbush to expressly discuss expectations for what went into special editions.
In an Oct. 7 email IndyStar obtained, Rodenbush passed onto IDS leaders guidance from the Media School administration that the IDS’s print publication should solely focus on a special theme, such as homecoming or fall sports, and contain “no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage.”
“It’s my understanding that this is an expectation, not a suggestion,” the email reads.
Since all content is published online, controlling the mode of delivery is not an editorial decision or censorship, Clavio told Rodenbush and other IDS professional staff members in a Sept. 25 meeting, according to a recording provided to IndyStar.
“The content is the stories,” Clavio said. “The way the stories are published is a business decision.”
When asked about that argument, the Student Press Law Center’s Hiestand laughed: “They’re just making stuff up, and quote me on that.”
Rodenbush said during the meeting that Clavio was putting him in an “awful position.” Throughout the meeting, Rodenbush pushed back on Clavio’s argument, asked for demands in writing and said student leaders should be present for editorial discussions.
“If you’re telling them that you can’t put this in the paper on campus, it’s the literal definition of censorship,” Rodenbush said in the recording. “It cannot come from me, and it cannot come from you.”
Rodenbush was fired Oct. 14 in a letter from Media School Dean David Tolchinsky that said in part: “Your lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the University’s direction for the Student Media Plan is unacceptable.”
Later the same day, the co-editors received a message from Tolchinsky saying the paper would shift “from print to digital platforms” effective this week. Michael Arnold, the director of Indiana Public Media, which oversees the IDS, confirmed in an Oct 15 meeting with remaining advisers that there will be no print edition for the foreseeable future, Hilkowitz and Miller told IndyStar.
Editor’s note: IndyStar First Amendment reporter Cate Charron is a former editor-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student, the student newspaper at Indiana University in Bloomington.
The USA TODAY Network – Indiana’s coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.
Have a story to tell? Reach Cate Charron by email at [email protected], on X at @CateCharron or Signal at @cate.charron.28.
Reach Brian Rosenzweig at [email protected]. Follow him on X/Twitter at @brianwritesnews.
