At the University of Kansas, aspiring journalists cut their teeth as staff for The University Daily Kansan.
Many of the positions there are paid and funded by the publication's budget, which comes primarily from KU student activity fees — just $3.64 per student.
But that budget could be facing significant cuts, echoing woes by student and professional media across the country.
A proposal in front of the KU Student Senate's finance council would have reduced the University Daily Kansan's budget by 80%. Although the bill failed just last week, the paper's future still remains uncertain.
"You would be getting one-fifth of the journalism we're producing right now, one-fifth of the content (if this passed)," Courtney Lane, the editor-in-chief of the University Daily Kansan, told KCUR's Up To Date. "We're kind of in limbo right now."
According to the University Daily Kansan's reporting, members of student government did not provide any reasoning behind the proposed budget cut.
The University Daily Kansan isn't the first student publication to face major budget woes in recent years. And because student newspapers are the training ground for many future journalists, the trend could have an impact on the industry as a whole.
Kathy Kiely, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia, says "learning by doing" is a fundamental part of the education process.
"You know, this is a time when people are talking about doing apprenticeships and learning a trade, and that is exactly what these student publications do," Kiely told Up To Date. "And, people who work for them go on to have great careers — some of them in journalism, and some of them in other fields — because they have learned critical thinking skills by being journalists. So, it's extremely important."
- Courtney Lane, editor-in-chief, The University Daily Kansan
- Nick Jungman, director of strategy, The University Daily Kansan
- Kathy Kiely, Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia
