“Student media plays an integral role in our media ecosystem. It’s the pipeline for the future of journalism. People need to have a better understanding of the challenges of student media, and the more we get that news and information out to a broader audience, the more support we can cultivate for the great work the student journalists, their advisers and their faculty do.”
— Gary Green
Student Press Law Center
A note about this from Chuck
Working at WKU Student Publications has been, hands down, the best years of my career. It is incredibly rewarding — and challenging — to work with smart young people who aspire to be journalists and who want to get better.
It’s also challenging to keep our student-led operations reasonably healthy and going concerns. Over the past decade, we have entirely rewritten our business model, reaching into new areas to support the journalism at the core of our mission.
It is enormously tough work that challenges the brain, the heart and the soul on almost a daily basis. But it has also been spectacularly rewarding. Our students at WKU have blazed a path of innovation in building new products and trying new things to support our journalism.
And they have done it remarkably well. Since 2012, our students on the College Heights Herald, the Talisman, Student Publications Advertising and Cherry Creative have earned 23 Pacemaker Awards, the gold standard for student media — no other university in the country can top that. Just since 2020, they’ve collected 14 — again, another number no other university can top.
But it’s not all about awards. They’ve done spectacular journalism, revealing challenges that their own university wasn’t talking about in how it investigates sexual misconduct, problems that forced the closure of its three newest dorms, budget practices that two years in a row saw the university spend millions of dollars more money than it took in, and a dramatic fall in enrollment that is the sharpest drop in the state.
It’s watchdog reporting, the kind of journalism that is essential in a democracy, giving people the facts they need to know in order to make informed decisions — and an exceptional training ground for when these aspiring journalists step away from the Hill to practice their craft around the globe.
Yes, we are facing many of the problems this important article linked below points out. But we also are addressing them in creative and innovative ways that, I hope, is strengthening our structure in a way that will ensure our editorial independence long into the future.
Spend some time and give this a read. If you care about journalism at all, you’ll find it compelling.