ANN ARBOR, Mich. – In January, residents here learned the news that the senior place-kicker for the University of Michigan’s football team had been permanently “separated” from the college for violating its student sexual misconduct policy. In addition, the violation, what the authorities said was a sexual assault, occurred in 2009, when the kicker was a freshman, and his punishment was not determined until his athletic career had ended this past winter.
The article describing all of this, based on documents reviewed by two reporters, stated, “It’s unclear why sanctions were not decided in this matter until recently.” A month later, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights began investigating the university’s handling of the case.
It was a shocking revelation for a university town that has a population of 116,000 and a football stadium of nearly the same capacity. But almost as surprising was the origin of the report: The story was not broken by the local professional news organization, The Ann Arbor News. Instead, it was uncovered by The Michigan Daily, the university’s independently run student newspaper.
The Ann Arbor News, owned by Advance Publications, changed in July 2009 from a daily newspaper to a web-first model that produced a print edition only twice a week, making Ann Arbor among the first American cities to lose their only daily paper. Since then, The Michigan Daily has been the only Monday-through-Friday print publication in town.
As daunting financial pressures force newspapers around the country to shut down or severely trim staff and budgets, a new model has emerged in many communities in which college journalism students increasingly make up for the lack of in-depth coverage by local papers.
In January, the journalism school at the University of Kansas began a wire service, with reporters covering legislative sessions at the statehouse for newspapers across the state.
At Arizona State University, student journalists produce print, online and broadcast pieces from their Phoenix and Washington newsrooms for more than 30 professional news outlets in Arizona. The school has the state’s largest Washington news bureau, staffed by students who receive class credit for spending a semester in the capital.
Samuel Weinstock, president of The Harvard Crimson, recounted the breaking news his paper has covered extensively in the last two years. In addition to the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers, he cited a bomb scare on four Harvard buildings in December; an investigation into a student cheating scandal; and a controversy in which university administrators secretly searched the email accounts of 16 resident deans.
“We aim to be first and best,” he said. “We consider every local and national publication our competition.”
