Editor's note: The IDS is exploring ways to save its weekly print edition. Those interested in supporting the IDS can donate here.
The IU Media School plans to eliminate the Indiana Daily Student’s weekly print edition beginning this spring as a key part of its plan for student media, claiming the move will save money and help make a converged IDS, WIUX and IU Student Television operation revenue neutral within three years.
The school announced the plan publicly Tuesday afternoon before consulting with student media leaders or the IU journalism faculty, even though the school had scheduled meetings with both groups Wednesday. Most of the IDS’ student staff members, including the designers that work to design a print product each week, were unaware of the change when it was announced.
IUSTV executive director Jack Paley and WIUX director Trevor Emery confirmed to the IDS that they were aware there was a plan in place but did not know the specifics before it was announced publicly.
“Clearly (the Media School), they’re comfortable with making decisions without consulting anyone, and feel like those are the best decisions,” Emery said.
The Media School’s initial separate Wednesday meetings between the journalism faculty and student media leaders are still scheduled to go as planned, according to an email sent out to faculty shortly after the press release Tuesday.
Ashton Hackman, IUSTV news director, said he was also unaware the plan would be announced today, though he knew a decision from the Media School was coming eventually.
Hackman said it was frustrating to learn about the merger from Tuesday’s press release. He said the manner of the announcement was “inappropriate in (his) eyes.”
“It’s not a divorce, but like, if my family was getting a divorce, I wouldn’t want it to be announced to the entire family before I know myself,” Hackman said. “So I wish that from a Media School standpoint, this could have been an internal thing that could have been announced and understood. That way the people in these student media organizations…had the adequate time to react to this news.”
He said in the long run, he thinks the merger will benefit IU student media.
“I think it might be confusing now, it might be hard to accept obviously for a lot of people,” Hackman said. “But I think four years from now, when there’s nobody in the Media School that was here currently, I think they’re just going to look at (the merger) as, ‘This is what it should be in the 21st century.’”
While the three media organizations will retain their individual brands under the plan, business operations will be consolidated in an attempt to increase efficiency and generate revenue by selling ads across all three platforms.
The IDS obtained a copy of the report, which was sent to IU journalism faculty Tuesday with the condition it not be shared with students until after a 3 p.m. meeting with students Wednesday – the first time Media School Dean David Tolchinsky has scheduled a meeting with IDS leaders this semester.
While print will be cut, “high revenue” special publications will be retained. The exact publications included in that category is unclear.
Although the weekly print edition is profitable, generating $92,546 in fiscal year 2024, cutting print while retaining some special publications — which allow the IDS to keep revenue from posters and the ads within special publications — appears to have the potential to generate more profit.
Though a report produced in April by a committee of students, faculty, staff and alumni urged the university to provide funding to help close the IDS’ roughly $300,000 yearly deficit, no direct funds will be provided. Additionally the Media School will continue to charge the IDS an “auxiliary tax” despite the April report’s request to eliminate the tax.
Indirect sources of funding include the transfer of an IDS professional staff member to a broader Media School role, where the IDS would no longer have to pay their salary, and the transfer of some Media School student academic appointees to business-related roles within student media.
Central to the effort to reach budget neutrality is an idea for a student media app and converged newsletter. This is not the first time a student media app has been created — the last one, which was released in Fall 2022 and cost more than $10,000 to produce — was invite-only and never monetized.
Other than print, the report makes no other cuts to the IDS, preserving the jobs of all five professional staff members and student pay. It’s not clear from the report if IUSTV and WIUX students will be paid for their work moving forward, or if such a cost was accounted for in the three-year goal for budget neutrality.
The majority of student news outlets – 56% – receive direct or allocated funding from their university, according to a report by the University of Florida’s Brechner Freedom of Information Project. Increasing mandatory student fees by just $6 a year would practically eliminate the IDS’ deficit, but IU administrators refused to consider any increase, according to the April report.
Another aspect of the April report was supporting student journalists’ mental health and safety. The Media School plans to address this by providing annual workshops and creating new courses.
The report also mentioned ideas for two new bodies: the Deans Council for Student Media, which would provide advice on student media industry practices and “evaluate pitches for innovative new operational ideas that could result in additional budget commitments,” and the Student Media Advisory Board, which would advise in the “creation and operation of the converged organization.”
“A lot of thought and work has been put into this plan,” Tolchinsky told the IDS on Tuesday. “The idea of maintaining editorial independence while moving our student media to kind of a converged, innovative platform and making them the best learning lab they can be. I’m very excited about that.”
The IDS has struggled financially as a result of nationwide trends in media and advertising. In 2017, the IDS cut print production from five days a week to two and became a weekly in 2020. This past summer, the print paper was only produced once a month before resuming weekly print operation in the fall. Each print cut has failed to achieve substantial reductions in the IDS’ deficit and have been followed by a decrease in our overall page views and revenue. The university committed to allow the IDS to operate on a deficit for three years in 2021, which was extended in the summer of 2024. The university also forgave the IDS’ nearly $1 million debt during the summer.
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Recommendations from the April committee for student media.
