‘Every single day, there's a different thing’
Allison Saeng // Unsplash+
Amid a flood of federal actions toward higher ed, Open Campus shares reporting starting points, story ideas and key questions to ask universities
Journalism’s firehose has a new target: higher ed reporters.
“Anyone who's on the higher ed beat (since Trump’s inauguration), it's almost like a before and after,” said Kayleigh Skinner, a managing editor at Open Campus. “Professional working beat journalists are like, ‘I cannot keep up; I'm so overwhelmed.’ Every single day, there's a different thing.”
That’s part of the reason Open Campus, which helps seed and support higher ed reporters at different local newsrooms across the country, has launched Higher Ed Under Pressure. And while the organization doesn’t usually work directly with student journalists or journalism schools, Skinner was eager to share its philosophies and resources with journalism students and professors.
“College students have an inside window into what their peers are worried about,” she said. “What we're trying to do with the Higher Ed Under Pressure project is help local reporters translate why what's happening in D.C. impacts their local community. It's the same thing on a campus — how is what the Trump administration is doing affecting your literal day-to-day on campus?”
Skinner recommended that professors and students take a look at these Under Pressure resources:
A chronological list of major actions affecting higher education institutions by the Trump administration: Higher Education Under Pressure: Administration Actions
She also suggested diving into the NIH research portal to find your university and even the specific professors involved with research to serve as sources. (I did a quick search for my alma mater, Oklahoma State, by clicking the state on the map in “Active Funding by State” on the top left-hand side of the site, and was able to quickly filter for OSU and find more than 40 researchers on campus listed by name.)
Skinner said that while professors and staff may be scared to speak out, reporting can be a numbers game.
“If you just reach out to enough people, someone's going to talk,” she said.
One more tip: Look up your state's retention schedule, which lists the kinds of documents public agencies are required to keep (h/t Brechner Center, the University of Florida).
“That can help you when you're filing a records request,” she said, encouraging students to be persistent and push back at high costs or denials. “Get used to this feeling of being annoying because you are. You are being annoying. But it's your job, and it's their job to get back to you.’
She said that while this kind of reporting can feel intimidating, she’s impressed with students who don’t give up and don’t always feel the need to be comprehensive in their coverage.
“I want to reaffirm to anyone who is working at a college newspaper that whatever you're feeling right now, I promise you, everyone else in news right now feels the same way,” Skinner said. “The biggest thing we're finding in our network … is that (journalists) so frequently are like, ‘I don't know what to write if I'm reaching out to all these institutions and people and everyone's not talking to me, or the university's not giving me comment.’
“That's a story. I just cannot say that enough. That is a story.”
