Sounding the Alarm: Legal Implications of Evolving College Media Independence

Abstract While scholars provide guidance on the ideal of independence among collegiate news organizations, practitioners in the field recognize major barriers to achieving pure independence from an associated university or college. This article considers legal precedent to determine how the gap between pure college media independence and modern, standard practices of these news organizations create murky lines for courts when determining whether public universities have the right to regulate and control aspects of student media. Using data and transcripts from a 2021 study of college news sustainability, the current work argues that college media are evolving and that U.S. legal precedent does not provide comprehensive protections for student journalists to accommodate the changes happening within this sphere of media. We also describe how the U.S. Supreme Court’s current views of the press and New Voices legislation might impact the future of the college media sphere.