The work schedule of The Argonaut staff is never-ending. At any moment of the day, our staff are working tirelessly to procure interviews, attend events, write clear, engaging articles and are always on the lookout for stories we think our audience wants or needs.
We do this work, not because of the pay, but because we think it is important. Student journalists are journalists, and we value our work reporting facts and sharing unique perspectives and voices.
As an independent newspaper, we also have the unique position of holding our university and our student government accountable. As a result, we report on things like the shutting down of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and ASUI’s recent passing of a resolution congratulating President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance on their election.
We, of course, also get to cover lighthearted things, like the successes of our sports teams or Life section recipes and reviews.
The media landscape is changing rapidly with new technologies and an uncertain political future. With a president who can restrict major media associations like the Associated Press from the White House merely because they refuse to adopt the language of “Gulf of America,” it can seem like press freedoms are under strain.
If threats against the First Amendment’s freedom of speech and freedom of the press this grand are affecting major media organizations, where does that leave smaller, independent presses like university newspapers and other student media organizations?
Today, Feb. 27, marks the eighth-annual Student Press Freedom Day and serves as a reminder of the challenges and continuing strengths of student media organizations.
This day is organized by the Student Press Law Center, whose mission in recognizing the day, according to their website, is to “gather student journalists and their supporters across the United States to spend the day raising awareness about their challenges, celebrating their contributions to their schools and communities and taking actions to protect and restore their First Amendment freedoms.”
“SPLC promotes, supports and defends the First Amendment and free press rights of student journalists and their advisers,” according to their general mission statement since they were founded in 1974.
The Argonaut utilized SPLC’s invaluable help just last month as the University of Idaho attempted to change our payment system from being outside vendors to university employees.
Mike Hiestand, the Senior Legal Counsel for SPLC, responded to our questions and hesitations about the situation with some of the possible risks of student media coming under the classification of university employees, including having to disclose private information and records of anonymous sources, being prohibited from reporting on any educational matters vaguely deemed “education records” under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and a restriction of political speech and endorsements as the State of Idaho does not allow public employees (including public university employees) to engage in political speech and endorsements, which is a large part of journalism.
Armed with this information and with a Student Media Adviser who regularly advocates for us as serious and independent journalists, our situation was resolved with the communication of our concerns.
We, as an independent press affiliated with a public university, consider ourselves lucky in the sense that, at least in the last three years, we have not been pressured by university administrators or interfered with on matters of our budget, our production schedule and the stories we choose to write. We are able to do our jobs and, in general, our administrators do their best to accommodate our requests for information and interviews.
The same cannot be said for other university student newspapers.
Earlier this month, the Editor-in-Chief of Colorado State University’s independent student newspaper, The Rocky Mountain Collegian, Allie Seibel, reached out to us to tell us that the CEO and the Board of Directors of CSU’s student media administration was pushing for The Collegian to stop printing their weekly newspaper.
Seibel said that with advertising and recent printing alterations made, The Collegian still makes a profit from their print newspaper and wholeheartedly believes that print is still alive and well at CSU.
The Collegian is 133 years old, seven years older than The Argonaut, which makes the pressure on them to stop printing against their will heartbreaking from our point of view as we believe print newspapers to still be of value and important to campus communities. Newspapers are not only a creative endeavor of design, but also make important campus news accessible to collegiate student bodies and are a physical archive of campus culture throughout time.
Related to but beyond the death of print, other student presses are facing hardships. Many public universities have cut funding for their student media branches, including the University of California, San Diego, the University of Kansas, Indiana University and notably the University of Southern California’s newspaper, The Daily Trojan, who asked for financial autonomy last semester and received a major budget cut this semester that affected its printing schedule and staff and editor wages.
We, The Argonaut, are grateful to be paid through a specific student fee, and we will continue to honor that fee by providing the best coverage we can to our University of Idaho student and alumni audience.
Another notable case of the threat to student journalism is the arrest of student journalist Dilan Gohill, who was covering a pro-Palestinian campus protest at Stanford University in June 2024. After Gohill was arrested, former Stanford President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez said they “fully support having [Gohill] be criminally prosecuted and referred to the office of Community Standards,” according to the SPLC press release of the resolution of the ordeal in January 2025. It took seven months for both the criminal and Stanford’s Code of Conduct charges against Gohill to be dropped.
This event is terrifying for student journalists who only intend to do their jobs of reporting. It is certainly a worrying situation that everyone should be aware of and protect against.
Covering the Idaho legislature can be interesting and entertaining. Recently the House introduced two bills, one of which protects journalists and the other redefines libel in a harmful way.
House Bill 158, which was unanimously passed in the House this week, says, “No person engaged in journalistic activities shall be compelled to disclose in any legal proceeding, trial before any court, or before any jury the source of any information procured or obtained and published in a newspaper, print publication, digital news outlet, or by a radio or television broadcasting station with which the person is engaged or employed or with which the person is connected.”
While this is certainly a good thing for Idaho news media, it raises the question of why it was not passed sooner as the bare basics of journalism and the press. We are encouraged by this news, but every step forward can lead to a step backwards.
The other recent journalism-related bill introduced in the past week in Idaho was introduced by House Speaker Mike Moyle whose bill seeks to make it a felony crime to knowingly communicate a false statement about another person, turning libel into a felony.
The problem is not the cracking down on libel, it’s the bill defining “publish” as “communicate to a person or persons.” Traditionally, libel is only related to malicious defamation that has been published. Now, the bill leaves question as to whether gossip between people is libel and can be considered criminal felony punishable by the bill’s proposed punishment of a $100,000 fine and up to five years in prison.
Journalism is an ever-changing field, constantly challenged by government figures, and in student media, other types of leadership. It’s important for us, The Argonaut, to stick up for other journalists, other student newspapers and to continue advocating for our rights and the freedom of the press.