This column was originally published by TheStatehouseFile.com.
By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
October 17, 2025
Mark Cuban mentioned what should be the most important consideration in the imbroglio engulfing Indiana University and its student newspaper, The Indiana Daily Student.
For reasons that aren’t yet clear, IU decided to fire the school’s student media director and cancel publication of the IDS’ seven print editions. IU canned the director and pulled the plug on the print editions because administrators didn’t want the print editions to contain any news, only features celebrating important campus events.
These moves came following years of jostling at the university over the newspaper’s finances and editorial direction.
To try to resolve that jostling, Cuban, the billionaire owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and a 1981 IU graduate, made a $250,000 gift to IU to erase the paper’s deficits and cover other costs.
Cuban responded to his alma mater’s heavy-handed moves regarding the IDS with displeasure.
“Not happy. Censorship isn’t the way. I gave money to IU general fund for the IDS last year, so they could pay everyone and not run a deficit. I gave more than they asked for. I told them I’m happy to help because the IDS is important to kids at IU,” the disgruntled alum said in a social media post.
The last sentence of Cuban’s post is the one that matters most.
Student newspapers exist and should exist because they’re important to the “kids”—the students who work on them.
Bingo.
I serve as publisher of The Franklin, the student newspaper at Franklin College, which is also my alma mater. I’m also the publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
Both are costly enterprises. Both also report on issues and stories from time to time that college administrators and other members of the extended campus would prefer went uncovered.
But that’s the nature of such things.
Years ago, a colleague buttonholed me to complain loudly and at length about the way a reporter for The Franklin had grilled him during an interview.
He concluded his diatribe by saying, “I mean, come on, it’s not like these kids are working for The New York Times.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
“But we have to prepare them so that they can work at The Times. That’s what this should all be about,” I said.
Teaching young journalists is and always will be a learn-by-doing process. Student journalists must develop and practice their skills in public, which means they risk making beginners’ mistakes before an audience.
That takes courage.
But it also makes their work a flashpoint for insecure administrators and other forgetful members of college and university communities.
I’ve never ceased to be amazed at the way seasoned educators who never would dream of yelling at a kid who missed a question on a math test will ream out a student reporter who botched a quote.
When it comes to student journalists, many people can be remarkably quick to overlook the “student” part. They forget that learning is often a hard and painful experience.
The Indiana Daily Student has been one of the finest student newspapers—and therefore one of the finest teaching tools—in the country for generations. The alums who have worked on the IDS now populate not just newsrooms, but law firms, corporate board rooms and public policy think tanks, among other corners of power and influence.
In their zeal to contain costs and exert control over a publication that shines a light on parts of Indiana University some people would prefer left in the dark, administrators and board members seem to have forgotten something important—something Mark Cuban realized.
The IDS and all student newspapers exist not to make their schools or those schools’ leaders look good but to serve as learning laboratories for young people interested in news and public affairs.
The saddest thing about the controversy at IU is that the people charged with leading an institution dedicated to learning didn’t stop to ask a fundamental question.
What are we teaching our students by doing this?
No reputable college or university exists to make a profit. A good school’s mission is to serve its students well and finish each fiscal year with at least as much money as it started with.
The key is the mission.
Teaching students.
Sadly, the lesson IU seems to want to deliver to its student journalists is that might makes right.
