Stories at Northwestern, Stanford spotlight impact of student media

The fallout from a pair of stories published by the student-run news organizations at two of the nation’s premier universities has highlighted the power of the independent student press on their campuses.

The Daily Northwestern, which covers Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and the Stanford Daily have both conducted extensive investigations into the conduct of key university figures, leading to high-profile resignations and firings.

The two pieces of reporting, and the resulting scandals that have made national headlines, underscore the role student media often plays in accountability journalism within higher education.

At Northwestern, allegations of hazing and racism within its Division 1 football program, as first reported by The Daily Northwestern, led to the ouster of football coach Pat Fitzgerald — a fixture at the university and revered member of its athletics community.

Stanford University’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a renowned neuroscientist, announced plans to resign Wednesday after an independent university special committee found he did not sufficiently correct inaccurate information in research papers.

The committee was commissioned after an investigation published by the student-run Stanford Daily newspaper last fall.

“I think it’s pretty clear that without our reporting, this report wouldn’t have come around,” Theo Baker, an investigations editor at The Stanford Daily who is the son of New York Times reporter Peter Baker, told the Times. “More than anything, to me, this should raise conversations about the value of student journalism. If you love a place, and I really do love Stanford, you want to push it to be more transparent.”

The Stanford Daily stories were published in November and led to a months-long investigation by an outside firm that found that while Tessier-Lavigne did not specifically engage in publishing fraudulent research, “manipulation of research data” existed in works he authored.

At Northwestern, the impact of the students’ reporting was swift.

Fitzgerald was fired by the school just days after The Daily Northwestern published accounts from football players at the university who alleged they had been subject to widespread harassment and racist abuse under the coach’s tenure.

The student journalists behind the bombshell story said they had been contacted by a whistleblower, who they interviewed and led them to other members of the football program who had been subject to similar alleged mistreatment.

The story, which relied on unnamed sources, quickly gained national attention, and a group of former players announced this week they had retained prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump for possible litigation against the school.

On Wednesday, The Daily Northwestern reported a lawsuit had been filed against the university claiming “negligence and willful and wanton conduct in preventing and intervening in hazing within the football program.”

“We knew it was a big story. There have been other instances where we have released stories that we thought would have a big impact, but I’m not sure that we realized how big it would be nationally,” Nicole Markus, the summer editor of The Daily Northwestern said Wednesday on an episode of journalist Richard Deitsch’s sports media podcast.

“Immediately on social media we saw how big it was getting … that came as kind of a surprise to us because I don’t think as student journalists any of us have had our work read that extensively before,” Markus said.

Markus said the students’ reporting likely would not have had as broad a reach if not for the traction it gained on social media.

J.A. Adande, the director of sports journalism at Northwestern’s Medill School, echoed that sentiment Thursday in an interview with The Hill.

He said student media is filling a void in terms of thorough coverage of the university and its athletics left by an ever-shrinking number of local media outlets, particularly in investigative reporting.

“Through the reaction in the public we’ve seen the recognition that we need people to play these roles, otherwise the truth doesn’t come out,” Adande said. “[Students have] seen in this age nothing stays local. Every single thing is national and international. The main thing is that the original story held up … They understood that if you get the facts out right, it’s going to save you from a lot of the subsequent blowback.”

There have been other instances in recent years of student media holding powerful university figures accountable.

The student newspaper at Penn State initially published the sexual abuse claims against former football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky that led to his ouster and longtime college football figure Joe Paterno’s downfall.

More recently, a number of student media organizations have been instrumental in pushing back on university reopening policies during the coronavirus pandemic, a Poynter analysis in the fall of 2020 noted.

“When you’re in the moment when you’re listening to these stories, you’re focused on the stories, you’re in the moment, you’re focused on holding the trust they’re putting in you,” said Cole Reynolds, another student who worked on the Northwestern pieces. “Your mind is not on the Twitter view count or the national implications.”

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