'CENSORED': Defiant Students Publish Digital Newspaper After University Bans Print Publication

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: MEDIAite

Oct 17th, 2025, 7:11 pm



Indiana Daily Student


The turmoil at The Indiana Daily Student began on Tuesday, when director of student media Jim Rodenbush, an adviser to the Indiana Daily Student, was fired by the dean of the Media School.

Though the dean said in a letter that the firing was due to a “lack of leadership and inability to work in alignment with the university’s direction,” Rodenbush said he had “no doubt” that he was removed because he refused to comply with the school’s push to stop students from reporting news content.

Rodenbush, who has served as director since 2018, said in interviews that he began receiving pressure from the administration to stop student publication of news in August this year. He communicated these wishes to student writers and editors but refused to take part in the censorship himself.

“Any type of attempt on my end to censor or manipulate any content from a student media outlet is literally against the law,” Rodenbush told IDS staff during their Oct. 9 meeting. “This is First Amendment stuff.”

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/censored-defiant-students-publish-digital-newspaper-after-university-bans-print-publication/

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Link to tweet

Indiana Daily Student
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LETTER FROM THE EDITORS: Our student media director refused to censor the Indiana Daily Student. IU fired him.
idsnews.com
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS: IU fires student media director after he refused to censor the IDS
Indiana University directed the IDS to stop printing news.
7:50 PM · Oct 14, 2025

REFERENCE - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143548088

[Skittles]

1. love this

young folk taking the lead - BRING IT ON

[Pachamama]

2. I think we should all subscribe to their news feed and supporting them

[radical noodle]

4. The IDS has always been free

but they are taking donations on their website.

[oasis]

3. Taking a stand for freedom of the press. He

should be commended for his actions.

[thesquanderer]

5. Actually it wouldn't violate the 1st amendment for him to censor them...

...unless he was working under direction of the government. Which in a sense perhaps he was, but not clearly so.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Lawyers think it would

Though the IDS sits in a precarious financial position and receives university dollars, Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, said it does not give the university a license to control its content. He said the university's attempt to control what goes into the paper constitutes "blatant censorship."

The student publication is protected under the Public Forum Doctrine, he said. Once a government entity such as a public university establishes a designated public forum, such as a student newspaper, he said, it's up to those who use that forum to use it as they wish.

The university can cut costs for content-neutral reasons, such as a widespread budget cut, Hiestand said. However, previous court decisions have deemed it unconstitutional for universities to use the power of the purse to force a student publication to bend to its editorial will, he said.

https://eu.indystar.com/story/news/education/2025/10/15/indiana-university-orders-student-newspaper-ids-to-stop-printing/86709732007/

The public forum doctrine is an analytical tool used in First Amendment jurisprudence to determine the constitutionality of speech restrictions implemented on government property. Courts employ this doctrine to decide whether groups should have access to engage in expressive activities on such property.

Most scholars trace the lineage of the public forum doctrine to Justice Owen J. Roberts’s opinion in Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization (1939), in which he wrote: “Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens.”

First Amendment scholar Harry Kalven Jr. wrote of the concept in a law review article in 1965 titled “The Concept of the Public Forum: Cox v. Louisiana.” The term public forum, however, did not appear in First Amendment cases until the 1970s, and public forum doctrine did not appear until the 1980s.

https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/public-forum-doctrine/

[thesquanderer]

11. Ah. I did not realize this was a public university (as opposed to a private one). (n/t)

[republianmushroom]

6. Would seem shutting it down is more than a little censorship.

[BidenRocks]

8. Media School

Teach them young about censorship, overreach and chump ass kissing.

I would ask for a refund and leave the fascist school!

After I made them infamous!

[Hekate]

9. I knew they could. Go, young journalists, go!

[DavidDvorkin]

10. I wonder if IU owns the rights to the name of the paper.