Despicable.
This is just one of many words we could use to describe what happened to Indiana University’s (IU) “Indiana Daily Student” (IDS) last week as the university decided to block the newspaper from printing without warning, hiding behind the thinly veiled, pathetic excuse of making a business decision.
It’s one thing to realize that a product is not sustainable in its current form — the IDS had been losing money since 2021 — but IU helped stabilize the paper’s budget and it continues to receive donor funding, including from the university’s alum, and Pittsburgh native, Mark Cuban.
Yet, the newspaper’s printing was just cut by IU right as the university fired Jim Rodenbush, IU’s student media director and advisor to IDS, for refusing to demand his students at the IDS abide by IU’s absurd attempted ruling to no longer allow IDS to print news.
A newspaper that does not print news is purely PR fluff. Of course, that’s probably what IU’s administration wants from the publication. But this is not what journalism stands for, and it is reprehensible that IU ever thought for a second that it was reasonable with its request.
The Globe is no stranger to the business dealings of student media. We understand that printing a newspaper in 2025 is expensive — our budget goes entirely to paying the Tribune-Review to print our publication at their printing press. We can do nothing else with that money. We have also been asked several times if we would consider ending our print publication or cutting down the number of issues, much like the requests made of the Pittsburgh City Paper.
Our answer to that will be “no” for as long as possible. It is the opinion of every editorial member at The Globe that ending the print edition means ending The Globe. Even with an improved online presence, and even if we can survive without print, nothing beats holding a tangible product that one can point to for high-quality reporting.
But what’s more troubling about the situation at the IDS isn’t just IU’s flat refusal to additional funding from Cuban. Instead, it’s the fact that this is censorship of the media.
The Student Press Law Center (SPLC) has already demanded IU reverse course in its decision to try to bar the IDS from printing news. The Globe will anxiously watch and wait to see where this goes, because censorship of media — student media included — is illegal.
There’s a good reason why the First Amendment is stressed in journalism classes: it is paramount to what allows us to do the work we love to do and to do the reporting that needs to be done. Press freedoms are enshrined right there, and that will never change.
The situation in which the IDS has found itself in is one we hope The Globe won’t have to endure. We hope that our university administrators know better than to make a decision like this so starkly and hastily to censor student media; it’s bad optics. We hope Point Park never takes the actions at IU as inspiration.
For now, The Globe’s print edition is here to stay, and we are exploring options to increase our funding. To the staff of the IDS, we stand with you, and we have your back. Stay strong out there.
