Poynter: As threats to the press grow, student journalists are rewriting the rules
The Poynter Institute's Student Press Report highlights campus journalists at the Minnesota Daily and elsewhere who are responding to changing media norms.
Minnesota Daily opinions editor Wren Warne-Jacobsen (left) and editor-in-chief Alexis Letang (right) laugh during evening edits in the Daily's office. Courtesy photo
The Poynter Institute's Student Press Report highlighted the work of Hubbard School students at The Minnesota Daily and elsewhere around the country as they respond to the new realities of covering the news on campus and beyond.
Editors and advisers have had to confront another new and very real threat: their reporters’ physical safety when out in the field.
Charlie Weaver, executive director and co-publisher of The Minnesota Daily, said that as an adviser, he’s had to change how hands-on he allows himself to be with the reporters he mentors. Ordinarily, he lets the students have complete say over their outlet and the decisions that come with it. But when he had to invest in bulletproof vests, gas masks and other essential personal protection equipment, he and his coworkers knew they had to step in.
“I was really conflicted, because our whole philosophy of advising has traditionally been the students have all of this autonomy and agency and decision-making power within the organization,” he said. “But we had to quickly recalibrate, too. If I have said, ‘I don’t know’ more in the last two months than I have in my entire career, how can we expect them to just kind of go out and do that work?”
Read the full story on poynter.org.