Campus journalists are rewriting the playbooks on takedowns, anonymous sources and other longstanding J-school ‘rules’
This story was originally published in the Student Press Report, a national news desk covering student media and journalism education in higher ed. It is supported by lead partners Student Press Law Center and Flytedesk, with secondary support from the Associated Collegiate Press, the Association of University Student Media Managers, the College Media Business and Advertising Managers and CollegeJournalism.org.
By Jennifer Nehrer
Ryan Monke, a senior at Hofstra University, is a managing editor at his school newspaper. When he isn’t in class to get his media studies and political science degree, he’s overseeing section editors, tackling important coverage at the paper and looking to expand The Hofstra Chronicle’s audience.
He’s also trying to figure out how to protect his reporters from possible deportation by the U.S. government.
Monke is one of thousands of students around the country training to become professional journalists while the president of the United States attacks their profession and sics federal officers on their fellow residents.
Student editors across the country, including Monke, are responding by altering the practices they were taught — from refusing anonymity to sources and writers to unpublishing articles by request. Sometimes, these editorial decisions go directly against the rules that were drilled into them as they learned the ropes.
Laying low
The threats facing sources, former writers and student journalists during the second Trump administration have been enough to warrant unprecedented caution from student media organizations.
In April 2025, the Student Press Law Center and several other student media organizations issued a warning to student journalists, asking them to revisit their policies around anonymous sources and requests to take down articles. The warning noted that tactics used by immigration agents to find international and undocumented students have “forced us all to reconsider long-standing journalism norms.”
Monke said a few of his newspaper’s reporters are international students, which creates a greater urgency for the independent student newspaper to develop contingency plans.
“Originally I would just be thinking about how to keep the paper running well, and maybe branch out with outreach,” he said. “But now we’re kind of concerned with keeping writers safe.”
At Hofstra, which Monke calls a “liberal bubble” within a conservative county, some of the Chronicle’s journalists have felt that their writing is getting more scrutiny from the local community. As a result, Monke said he knows of at least one case where a writer’s future article may be written under a pseudonym because they are from another country, despite being a legal resident of the U.S. Monke said this may be the first time in his nearly four years at the paper that anonymity will be granted for an article.
Zoey Thomas, a senior at the University of Florida and the editor-in-chief of the Florida Independent Alligator, has seen the number of times anonymity has been granted rise dramatically over the last year. Having taken journalism classes and learned in the field, Thomas said it has been tough to keep up with the ever-changing landscape.
“It does feel like some of the things that I’ve learned (in class) have very quickly become obsolete,” she said. “It feels like there’s new ground rules for journalism every day — the best way to refer to things and approach things and write about them.”
Thomas also said she has had several instances of reporters who are international students not wanting to write about or have their names attached to political matters, even when they have “contributed significantly” to the reporting.
“That’s really hard because as an editor, I want to see reporters get bylines and get recognized for their work, but I have to respect that that’s a risk that they’re not always willing to take,” she said.
Thomas said being a student-run outlet has sometimes made it difficult to judge whether or not the decisions she and her fellow student journalists made are the right ones.
“A lot of times when we are making decisions about anonymity, for example, it sometimes all feels very gray,” she said. “There is really no clear-cut path, or right or wrong.”
Emma LaPointe, editor-in-chief of the University of Arizona’s Daily Wildcat, said she has experienced similar contrasts between her news work and classes, and wishes that her professors would be a little more lax.
“A lot of my professors are still a lot more stringent on those things than I would consider myself or my fellow editors to be,” she said. “There’s definitely circumstances where you should be able to sit down with your professor and be like ‘Hey, this is why this person is uncomfortable’ … especially because I don’t want student journalists to feel like they have to pick safe stories.”
Staying safe
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 (PPE), 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?”
Weaver became emotional when describing how The Minnesota Daily has had to retrain all of its members on how to safely cover Operation Metro Surge and the protests against it. The organization has also reconsidered and rebuilt support systems so that students could let out their feelings whenever they needed.
He and his students have been tear gassed, flash-banged and shoved by federal officers.
“I actually went out into the field with my reporters. … In my 25 years (as an adviser), I’ve never done that.”
Being at a university near a detention center in Florida, Thomas said she sent reporters to cover protests occurring there. For those at the Alligator, the biggest change has been making sure that everyone has their government IDs on them at all times, with some reporters carrying passports to prove their residency.
“That’s a change that we weren’t conscious of before this,” she said.
The challenge of digital footprints
Outside of protest safety, Weaver said Minnesota Daily Media has also altered its policy on takedown or anonymizing requests for articles to be more “gracious” in light of deportation concerns, even though Minnesota is a sanctuary city. Weaver said if a proper name is taken out of a story or an article is removed altogether, there will be no editor’s note written to explain why — he said tools such as the Wayback Machine could still be used to identify the person in question.
Weaver also said reporters are now directed to teach their sources what it means to be named in an article, and reporters themselves are taught how to maintain digital privacy.
“We have a responsibility to do no harm,” he said. “Part of that is going to be, if you’re interviewing an undocumented person, you need to tell them how they can protect themselves as well.”
Weaver said his organization has cautioned reporters to not contact international students through their school emails and is now considering switching to a more private cloud server than Google Workspace, such as Proton, to avoid the possibility that either entity could hand over information to the government if asked.
“FOIA works both ways,” he said.
At the OU Daily at the University of Oklahoma, editor-in-chief Anusha Fathepure said a similar protocol has existed since 2022. They call it the “clean slate policy,” and it provides a process for anyone who might want their name or other identifying characteristics removed from the Daily’s archived content. Fathepure said the policy was implemented in response to the rise of digital footprint awareness and scrutiny, something she coaches all of her writers to be aware of.
“A big learning and growth moment that happens when people go to college, or first become journalists, is the importance of presenting themselves in an unbiased way, including online and on social media,” she said. “This is so they don’t compromise their integrity to report from all perspectives.”
LaPointe said she has also seen an increased number of requests for articles to be taken down, sometimes years after they were originally published. In one instance, someone trying to get a visa contacted the paper at the advice of their immigration lawyer to ask for the takedown of an article where they made political statements.
Monke said one of the changes The Hofstra Chronicle has made for student safety is accepting fewer requests for republishing articles.
“There are a shocking amount of malicious actors — for this being a college paper — where a lot of people are here just to get reps as an aspiring journalist,” he said.
Monke knows that once an article is out on the internet, anyone who sees it can react — positively or negatively. Nevertheless, he and his student colleagues don’t seem to be shying away from reporting, even if it does mean being anonymous in some cases.
“I got involved freshman year because I wanted to write, and then I wanted to build my portfolio as an aspiring journalist,” he said, “but now we’re dealing with real-world impacts, and we’ve seen that on our campus and around here, and things are getting picked up by these massive organizations, and it’s kind of terrifying, but I think it’s a little bit empowering, too, seeing how relevant we are and important to the community.”
Weaver had similar thoughts, seeing how his journalists would certainly be in the field whether he was with them or not. This is the career they have chosen, and the job has already started.
“What magically changes from when they put the tassel on the other side of their motorboard and walk across the stage?” Weaver asked. “There’s nothing magical about that. They’re all adults. They get to make their own informed decisions. The best thing that I can do is make sure that they’re protected, that they’re as safe as possible and they understand the situations that they’re walking into.”
LaPointe, reflecting on her three years at Arizona’s Wildcat, is optimistic that she and her colleagues will keep the reporting going, even if some do not want them to.
“It is the most stressful time to be a journalist, but also the most important time to be a journalist,” she said. “We’ve had issues with people coming at us for stuff we post or for certain sides we’re taking, but I feel like at the end of the day, student media is just such a special place … There’s been some scary moments where it seems like the world has turned against us, but we are still here.”
Jennifer Nehrer is a student journalist completing her senior year at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She served in multiple editorial positions at USC’s independent student newspaper, The Daily Trojan; freelanced for the Times Media Group; and interned at the News Media Alliance and NBC News Digital Platforms. During this school year, she is an intern at NBC Los Angeles and a reporter with Annenberg Media’s Investigations Team. You can find her on Instagram @jennifernnehrer or view her work at jennifernehrer.com.