This just-concluded legislative session of the Indiana General Assembly marked the 20th year Franklin College journalism students have covered lawmakers crafting policy for the state and providing stories for news outlets all over the state.
During that time, those student journalists have captured award after award after award in state, regional and national competitions honoring excellence in reporting, writing, photography and documentary filmmaking.
When they compete against professionals—always in the toughest category against the most seasoned journalists working for the best-funded news organizations—they hold their own and often prevail.
In the most recent Indiana Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists Best in Indiana Journalism contest, TheStatehouseFile.com—the news website powered by Franklin College journalism students—won awards for best coverage of government or politics, best breaking news reporting, best arts and entertainment coverage and, yes, best news website.
In the just-announced SPJ Mark of Excellence Awards, reporters for TheStatehouseFile.com claimed first place in five categories and were finalists in two others. The five first-place winners move on to the national competition.
If they’re honored there, it will mark the third straight year Franklin College student journalists have been recognized in that prestigious national contest.
Each of those years, Franklin, with a student body of around 1,000, was by far the smallest college or university represented.
Not bad for a bunch of college kids.
All this success had humble origins. It began in January 2006 when my colleagues at Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and I wanted to see how our students would perform in real-world circumstances.
Seven students worked that first legislative session. They showed up early and they stayed late, filing story after story after story for a handful of news organizations that agreed to use the students’ stuff and give them bylines.
My colleagues and I learned something from that first Statehouse experience. We discovered the students’ skills and confidence grew at almost exponential rates under the intense deadline pressure environment and public scrutiny of covering Indiana’s government.
That set us on a path of embedding such experiences in our curriculum.
But we also stumbled on something else.
We learned that news organizations around the state embraced the students’ work because it offered those newspapers, newscasts and websites low-cost coverage of state government and politics at a time when the business model for newsgathering was under immense pressure. We also found that news organizations valued the students’ Statehouse work because it helped them identify emerging talent for internships and fresh hires.
These twin discoveries regarding the students’ growth and the market’s appetite for a nonprofit source of news coverage prompted us to create a year-round enterprise.
And TheStatehouseFile.com was born.
TheStatehouseFile.com has been blessed by the leadership of a series of superb executive editors—Lesley Weidenbener, Rachel Hoffmeyer Bragg, Janet Williams and now Colleen Steffen, each of whom brought impressive and unique skills to the challenge of molding students into professionals.
In the early years of its existence, partnership agreements and individual subscriptions provided financial support for TheStatehouseFile.com. The funds Franklin College collected from those agreements and subscriptions it routed to the students who worked on the site in the form of scholarships or stipends.
More recently, generous support from Lumina Foundation and other donors has allowed us to take down our paywall and offer our coverage for free to anyone.
Much has changed since 2006.
Back then, outside of public broadcasting, we were about the only not-for-profit news operation around.
Now, the collapse of the business model that sustained newspapers has altered the news landscape. That landscape now is populated with nonprofit local start-ups and satellites of national efforts, all of them laboring to solve the escalating problem of emerging news deserts.
Here in Indiana, these noble not-for-profit endeavors to provide Hoosiers with trustworthy news coverage follow a trail blazed by class after class of student journalists from Franklin College.
That’s because, for 20 years now, those students have demonstrated how it could be done.
Nearly 400 students have worked for TheStatehouseFile.com or its predecessor, the Franklin College Statehouse Bureau.
They have gone on to meaningful careers in journalism, in public relations, in law, in public service, in business and in teaching, among others
Wherever they are, they make a difference.
Their 20-year milestone didn’t generate a lot of noise.
But their work has made quite an impact.
