Astudent publication is a media outlet such as anewspaper,magazine,television show, orradio stationproduced by students at an educational institution. These publications typically cover local and school-related news, but they may also report on national or international news as well. Most student publications are either part of a curricular class or run as an extracurricular activity.[2]
Student publications serve as both a platform for community discussion and a place for those interested in journalism to develop their skills. These publications report news, publish opinions of students and faculty, and may run advertisements catered to the student body. Besides these purposes, student publications also serve as a watchdog to uncover problems at the respective institution. The majority of student publications are funded through their educational institution. Some funds may be generated through sales and advertisements, but the majority usually comes from the school itself. Because of this, educational institutions have specific ways in which they can influence the publications through funding.[2]
Many high schools and colleges offer online editions of their publications in addition to printed copies. Online content is typically more accessible to the student body, and production of the content is easier and cheaper.[3]
University student newspapers inAustralia are usually independent of university administration yet are connected with or run by the student representative organisation operating at the campus. Editors tend to be elected by the student body on a separate ticket to other student representatives and are paid an honorarium, although some student organisations have been known to employ unelected staff to coordinate the production of the newspaper (an example of this is the nationalStudent View newspaper).
Australian student newspapers have courted controversy since their inception. One of the more notorious of these controversies involved the publication of an article which allegedly incited readers to shoplift. The July edition of the magazine was banned by the Office of Film and Literature Classification following a campaign by conservative talkback radio hosts and other media to have the material banned. The four editors of the July 1995 edition ofLa Trobe University student magazineRabelais were subsequently charged with publishing, distributing and depositing an objectionable publication. An objectional publication was defined in this case, as one that incites criminal activity.[4] The editors lodged an appeal, which led to a protracted four-year court case. The appeal was eventually defeated by the full bench of theFederal Court, who refused the editors' application to appeal to theHigh Court of Australia.[5] The charges were eventually dropped in March 1999.
Many student newspapers inCanada are independent from their universities and student unions. Such autonomous papers are funded by student fees won by referendums, as well as advertising, and are run by their staffs, with no faculty input.
About 55 of Canada's student newspapers belong to a co-operative andnewswire service called theCanadian University Press,[6] which holds conferences, has correspondents across the country, is run democratically by its member papers, and fosters a sense of community among Canadian student journalists.
The oldest continually published student newspapers in Canada areThe Varsity (1880),The Queen's Journal (1873), andThe Dalhousie Gazette (1868). The oldest student publication in Canada isThe Brunswickan, which was founded in 1867 as a monthly but then switched to a weekly newspaper.
The only Canadian student newspaper that continues to print on a daily schedule isThe Gazette at the University of Western Ontario.
Student publications are produced atIreland's universities and Institutes of Technology as well as to a lesser extent at Colleges of Further Education. These publications includeThe College Tribune andThe University Observer atUniversity College Dublin,Trinity News andThe University Times atTrinity College Dublin,The College View based atDublin City University andSin Newspaper atNUI Galway. Other publications includeThe Edition (stylised as the eDITion), atDublin Institute of Technology and theUCC Express andMotley Magazine atUniversity College Cork.
Each publication reports on affairs at its host university and on local, national and international news of relevance to students and many student journalists have gone on to work in Ireland's national press. All student publications in Ireland are funded by or linked to their host university or its students' union, with the exception of UCD'sCollege Tribune which operates independently. Irish student publications are invited each year to enter the national Student Media Awards, run by a Dublin-based marketing firmOxygen.ie under various categories.
Almost every university inSouth Korea runs a student based press. Although many of these press are funded by the school, the students press has a significant amount of say amongst the student body.
Student newspapers in theUnited Kingdom are often given a constitutionally guaranteededitorial independence from the universities andstudents' unions whose students they represent, although the majority are financially dependent on their students' union. Notable British student newspapers that are financially as well as editorially independent from their respective student unions areCherwell (Oxford Student Publications Ltd),Varsity (Varsity Publications Ltd; Cambridge),The Tab (Tab Media Ltd; national) andThe Gown (Queen's University Belfast).
In 2003,The National Student, the UK's first independent national student newspaper, was launched (closed 2019).Scotcampus a similar publication based in Scotland was founded in 2001 (closed 2016). In 2009,The Student Journals was founded as an independent online magazine for students, but started allowing international writers one year after launch (closed 2014).
Student publications include United StatesHigh School newspapers,[7] such asTattler (student newspaper),Berkeley High Jacket,The Spectator (Stuyvesant High School),The Exonian, andThe Classic (newspaper).
Tinker v. Des Moines concerns a group of students who wanted to wear black armbands to school in 1965 to protestUnited States involvement inVietnam. After school officials heard about the planned silent protest, they suspended the students involved. A few of the students involved sued and theSupreme Court sided with the students, saying that provided that these speech acts did not distract themselves or others from academic work, the real purpose of the school, then students were free to wear and say want they liked in school. This is considered the benchmark case in issues of student free speech and contains the famous phrase "students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate."[8]
Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, heard by the United States Supreme Court in 1987 concerned a public school newspaper that attempted to print two controversial stories about issues of teen pregnancy and divorced families. It was the custom of the principal to look over the proposed paper before publication. With little time left before the publication deadline, the principal decided that the two stories, though names had been changed to protect the stories' subjects, were inappropriate for the paper's younger readers; under direction of the principal, the paper was printed without the offending stories. The students filed suit, but the Supreme Court stood by the principal's ruling, that, because of time constraints, the only proper course of action was to not print the stories. It was decided that the students'First Amendment rights had not been infringed. This case is often cited by high schools and universities to support the custom of prior review.[9]
Hazelwood andTinker offer conflicting versions of student free expression. Student-directed publications may indeed be considered open or limitedpublic forums for student expression, offering students freedom of expression under bothHazelwood andTinker.
Hazelwood, for example, does not say administrators must review orcensor their papers before publication. In fact, journalism education organizations, like theJournalism Education Association, argue that prior review has no legitimate educational merit and is only a tool leading to censorship.
Under certain limited conditions and situations presented byHazelwood, school administrators may be permitted prior review of (mostly high school) student publications.
Until June 2005, theHazelwood standard was not considered to apply to public college and university newspapers, a decision most recently affirmed in the 2001 appeals court decision inKincaid v. Gibson. However, in June 2005, the7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, inHosty v. Carter, that theHazelwood standard could apply to student publications that were not "designated public forums," and in February 2006 theSupreme Court declined to hear the students' appeal. At this time[when?], theHosty decision applies only in the states ofIllinois,Indiana andWisconsin.
In response to the Kincaid decision, theCalifornia State Legislature passedAB 2581, which extended existing state-level statutory protection of high school student journalists to college and university students.[10] The bill was signed into law by GovernorArnold Schwarzenegger and took effect on January 1, 2007.
Controversy over alleged censorship actions has led some student newspapers to become independent organizations, such asThe Exponent ofPurdue University in 1969,The Daily Californian of theUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1971,The Daily Orange ofSyracuse University in 1971,The Independent Florida Alligator of theUniversity of Florida in 1973,The Cavalier Daily of theUniversity of Virginia in 1979,The Paisano of theUniversity of Texas at San Antonio in 1981, andThe Mountaineer Jeffersonian ofWest Virginia University in 2008.
Some states have laws which enhance theU.S. Constitution in protecting student expression documented by theStudent Press Law Center.
University administrations have learned to get around constitutional protections and effectively diminish critical student newspapers by following the example of formerBoston University PresidentJohn Silber, who on the advice ofHarvard Law School ProfessorAlan Dershowitz, eliminated all funding for student newspapers in the 1970s in an attempt to suppress on-campus criticism. Silber's policy went so far as to ban student organizations funded by the university from placing advertisements in the student press. With his hands-off policy, Silber was able to eliminate the independence ofThe Daily News and financially crippled the more-radicalb.u. exposure. Theexposure sued Silber and the university for infringement of theirFirst Amendment rights, but the courts of the Commonwealth ofMassachusetts eventually dismissed their case.
Studies by theJournal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE) focusing onAfrican American students have found that as few as 2.6% of editors of all student newspapers are of African-American descent, with other minorities showing similar trending. These numbers are not much higher at schools with credited journalism schools. In these institutions, only 4.4% of editors are of African American descent. Both of these percentages are significantly below the percentage of population African-Americans make up in the total United States. Such skewed demographics in these publications could result in newspapers that only reflect the outlooks and values of a particular segment of the student population. TheJBHE did not suggest any type ofaffirmative action program for student publications at the study's release in 2004.[11]
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