Administrators as News Sources for Student Journalists

Teaching and administration often is clearly separate on higher education campuses; the twain seldom meet. One area precludes this notion: The teaching of student journalists to effectively deal with and report on the actions of public officials. On most campuses, the first encounter by an inexperienced budding journalist begins with a walk to the administration building. Here are the people operating the mechanism by which the campus functions. Campus officials figure significantly in the journalist's experience and education. They are teachers in this role, regardless of any preparation for its challenges. As conveyers of information, the administrator's role is crucial to the success of the student reporter, to the perception of the student newspaper, and to the image of the public officials occupying the administration and other buildings on campus. How these factors converge can heavily influence an administration's posture toward the newspaper. Operating under the First Amendment, censorship appears precluded. However, certain actions remain possible to inhibit the flow of campus information that democracy demands. Administrators seeking to cut higher education budgets have examined duplication of journalism and mass communications program content. They raise questions of a program's centrality to university missions, and an absence of visible, effective leaders from these programs (Beasley, July 1994 and September 1994; Dennis, 1994). No other university department of study or activity produces, with such regularity and finality, evidence of its work. Even if others did, seldom would they directly involve, quote, or misquote the very people at the highest level of authority. This study examines administrators' perceptions of treatment by student reporters, how the respondents' views as sources differ, and what journalism teachers, student newspaper advisers, and interested administrators might learn from these findings. Literature review Student journalists routinely interview and quote collegiate administrators for campus-based news stories; however, the role of these administrators as news sources apparently has not been examined. Researchers have studied some aspects of the college media (Bodle, 1993a; Adams, Bodle and Nanney, 1993; and Jasinski,1994), but apparently no one has examined college administrators' views of the accuracy, bias or saliency of student newspapers. College daily newspapers rely on campus-oriented news, with 40 percent of their total coverage coming from administrative functions, faculty senate meetings, student government proceedings, and actions of other campus governing bodies. Extracurricular student club meetings, social functions, the physical plant, and academic honors comprise another 18.5 percent (Gibson, 1991). Sources, knowing neither the reputations nor the reliability of student interviewers, become wary and less cooperative after a bad experience. Misquoted professors or administrators not only have long memories, they have more permanence on campus than any student reporter (Moore, 1992). Academic journals and trade publications may enhance administrators' aggravation with collegiate journalists and their newspapers. Educational Record and Chronicle of Higher Education have published unflattering stories about collegiate newspapers or suggested ways to manage them better (Martindale, 1983; Hirschorn, 1987; Biemiller, 1989). On the other hand, Peter Flawn (1990), former president of the University of Texas, wrote that presidents would not want to lead a university that did not have a student newspaper. Student publications "add life, color, and excitement to the campus" (p.100). Also, he noted, sardonically, First Amendment rights extend to "the most childish and sophomoric student publications." Administrators may hold the perception that these newspapers contain reporting and writing inferior to that of professional publications. …