Don’t Stop the Beat

As the journalism industry faces the challenges of a digital world, newspapers have no choice but to change their reporting methods and employment structure. However, this should not come at the cost of journalistic breadth and depth. As such, we regret that many newsrooms across the country have decreased their higher education coverage and eliminated higher education beats writers. While it is always difficult to determine the best way to tighten one’s belt, sacrificing college and university reporting is an unwise cut on the part of many publications.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently noted, “At a time when newspapers are slashing their staffs and squeezing out education coverage, it is more difficult for colleges to communicate their relevance and messages to the public.” This trend is worrisome, partly because journalists serve the community when they publicize breakthroughs happening at universities. Without such media coverage, it would be difficult to draw attention to new research developments, musical compositions, films, and philosophies that appear in abundance at higher education institutions. While colleges and universities can publicize their own findings, their press releases may suffer from bias. Newspapers provide a more objective viewpoint while also synthesizing and analyzing research to make it digestible for the average person.

If this trend in local and national journalistic priorities continues, college newspapers must pick up the slack in order to hold their institutions accountable. While professional papers are still better suited to cover higher education, since they do not suffer from conflict of interest, student publications are the next best option. If they do not pick up where the professionals leave off, controversial university policies could take effect without proper, outside scrutiny. In order to prevent this and ensure that their coverage remains largley free from bias, college papers should strive to become independent from their universities whenever possible.

The journalism industry is not going away—it’s merely changing. Thus, it is imperative for newspapers to consider their content, both old and new, carefully. Although we understand that publications are stretched thin these days, we strongly encourage professional papers to consider making other cuts before eliminating higher education beat writers. Universities have historically been the birthplace of many game-changing ideas and innovations. If newspapers won’t give us a reliable and unbiased account of these stories, who will?