The power of student journalism was on full display as the Student Press Law Center kicked off its 50th anniversary celebrations with an event at the New York Times last week.
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof and current student journalists Charlotte Hampton, managing editor for The Dartmouth, and Isabella Ramírez, editor-in-chief and president of the Columbia Spectator, each emphasized the challenges student journalists face but also their important role in today’s news ecosystem.
“I would encourage us to think about how we can collectively support not just those individuals, but this broader institution of student journalism as a way of supporting journalism writ large, because fundamentally, student journalism is journalism,” Kristof said.
He recalled his own high school censorship battle when, in 1976, his principal censored and shut down the student newspaper while he was editor.
“It felt very lonely. And then I don’t remember how I heard about the SPLC. It was only two years old,” Kristof said. “Somehow I heard about it and called up, and it was so helpful to have somebody at the other end of the line who knew about student press issues, and not only about the legal situation … but also just to provide a certain amount of moral support, you know that you’re not crazy, that students can have useful contributions.”
With all the stressors for journalism right now — newspapers closing, Americans’ lack of trust in media, the continued need to increase newsroom diversity to reflect their communities — Kristof emphasized the importance of training and engaging the next generation of journalists.
“If we’re going to understand the kind of issues that animate young people, that matter, that are going to be on the agenda five years from now, 10 years from now, then I think it’s important that we give voice to those captive voices,” he said, referencing the 1974 “Captive Voices” book by Jack Nelson that found pervasive censorship in scholastic journalism and called for the creation of the Student Press Law Center.
Last spring was a particularly challenging time for student journalists, as Hampton and Ramírez described.
Hampton and Alesandra Gonzales, a photographer for The D, were reporting on the arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters on campus May 1 when police pulled them from a group of other journalists. Despite wearing press credentials, they were zip tied, arrested, charged with criminal trespass and released on bail after about an hour in jail.
“It was a really scary and sad day for me, and I definitely learned a lot,” Hampton said. “I think what was hardest about this whole experience was the aftermath. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sleeping for a week between getting arrested and the prosecutor dropping my charges.”
SPLC quickly organized a coalition of press freedom organizations to demand the charges be dropped — and they were, within hours afterward.
“SPLC was really the biggest part of this outpouring of support that we saw… I got on the phone with Mike [Heistand] after a couple of days, and he just gave me a lot of guidance that kind of let me sleep easy for the first time, because I was able to speak to someone who actually knew what was going on. And you know, maybe there was a future for me.”
Senior legal counsel Mike Hiestand, who has answered more than 20,000 calls to the SPLC Legal Hotline since 1989, said during the program that dissuading that fear is one of the biggest things SPLC can do for student journalists.
“These are young journalists and they haven’t encountered a lot of these situations before,” he said. “One of the big things we try and do, or that I at least try and do, is try to put it all in perspective.”
Ramírez led the Spectator‘s coverage of Columbia encampments and protests, as well as the New York Police Department’s clearing of the campus when dozens of protesters were forcibly arrested.
She said the Spectator had been covering these issues long before the first tents were set up, which brought a level of understanding and empathy to their reporting and helped set their coverage apart.
“We had built relationships over time with all the different students that were involved, from the pro-Palestinian protesters, pro-Israel protesters,” Ramírez said. “And I think that also is what made our content so rich, was the level of intimacy that we were able to achieve with, you know, just what was going on on campus.”
The evening also featured remarks from Marc Lacey, managing editor of The New York Times and SPLC Executive Director Gary Green before the discussion on the state of student journalism.
The event was sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, The New York Times and University of Iowa’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Duc Luu, director of journalism sustainability initiatives at the Knight Foundation, said student journalists are filling critical gaps in local news with more than 11,000 stories published in local news outlets just over the past year.
“For millions of Americans, their primary source of local news and information is likely to originate from inside of a classroom, and so for those communities, the quality of that journalism can be game changing,” Luu said.
The Knight Foundation has been supporting SPLC for much of its history and credits student journalism for strengthening democracy and playing a vital role in solving the local news crisis. Luu also stressed the importance of providing legal support to student journalists.
“Student journalists are journalists, period,” he said. “They deserve the same access as any other reporter to legal advice and guidance, and that’s why Knight is proud to support the Student Press Law Center as it celebrates its 50th anniversary and readies itself to meet the needs of student journalists for the next 50 years, and our communities surely need that.”
Green emphasized the privilege it is for SPLC to help student journalists tell the stories of their generation and their communities.
“They’re fearless in their pursuit of truth and transparency, and it’s just a tremendous honor for SPLC to be able to provide them the legal support and guidance they need to do this really important work,” he said.
SPLC’s student board member Pratika Katiyar closed the evening with her story of censorship as a high school journalist when she reported on racial and socioeconomic disparities at her Virginia school. Her reporting led to a change in the school’s admissions policy, and that change was litigated all the way to the Supreme Court.
“Student journalists are the future of journalism, but we’re also the present,” Katiyar said. “We need help, and SPLC has been there for us at a time when censorship is on the rise across schools, disinformation continues to proliferate our social media platforms and world press freedom is under threat.”
If you would like to support this work, please consider joining the SPLC at 50 Giving Society, which launched Oct. 22 at the event.