In this episode, we look at the recent controversies surrounding the Indiana University student paper, the Indiana Daily Student, which was forced to shut down its print edition in favor of the online version. Then we take a broader look at the shift from print to digital media.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 101 of Contemplating Life.

Yet again, it’s time for another editorial rant about the media.

I’ve got two topics I want to discuss in this episode. It’s one of those classic cases of, “I told you that story so I could tell you this one.” So, hold onto your hats. We’re going for a ride. Our first topic is censorship and free speech.

You would think that when freedom of the press and censorship are at issue, journalists would do their best to report such a story as clearly and as accurately as possible. Unfortunately, coverage of the controversy surrounding the Indiana University student newspaper, the “Indiana Daily Student,” seems a bit off-point.

Indiana University has ordered the shutdown of the print edition of the Indiana Daily Student while retaining the online edition. They also terminated Jim Rodenbush, the Director of Student Media. Naturally, the student journalists were angry about this. The University defended the move, saying they were focusing on the online edition because that’s how journalism is going these days. Print editions of newspapers and magazines are in serious decline, and we can easily see a near future where they don’t exist at all. That’s a bit of foreshadowing because that decline is the second topic I want to talk about. But back to the censorship story.

I’ve linked the news item from WTHR Channel 13 TV news, which I heard about the topic. The majority of the report focuses on the closure of the print edition, but it barely mentions the actual censorship issue. Okay, I didn’t listen very well. I couldn’t understand why closing print but continuing online constituted censorship. And why did they find the faculty advisor? There was so much emphasis on the students crying foul and the University saying, “It’s just a business decision,” that I never understood what was going on.

So, I didn’t listen very well. I did a Google search looking for articles about it. Before I came to the WTHR report, which would have refreshed my memory, I encountered an opinion piece by Jacob Stewart in the Indianapolis Star’s digital edition. Here is the opening paragraph.

“Indiana University-Bloomington shut down the print edition of the Indiana Daily Student after 158 years of operation. Many alumni condemned the move online, claiming it amounts to censorship.”

That didn’t tell me much. So they shut it down, and that is censorship? But wait a minute. If the online edition is still available, how is that censorship? The remainder of the article is behind a paywall, so I don’t know what else it said.

I finally had to go to the primary source: the digital edition of the Indiana Daily Student. I needed to know why shutting down the print edition was considered censorship. I finally got my answer.

Despite its name, the Indiana Daily Student print edition was published weekly for many years. Faced with declining ad revenue, the University subsidizes the publication to the tune of $250,000 per year. To cut costs, publication has been reduced to seven special editions per year tied to campus events. In question is the IU Homecoming Weekend special edition. The football team is experiencing unprecedented success, going undefeated and reaching historic heights in the AP College Football poll. A lot of attention is focused on this significant sports achievement.

The key issue I missed in all the reporting I heard is that the University ordered that the special homecoming print edition contain ONLY information about homecoming weekend and no other news items. While the planned special edition was going to contain articles about homecoming festivities, they also planned to include the typical news items you would find in a student paper. The University wanted it to be strictly homecoming-related, expecting nothing more substantial than articles like “10 Tun Things to Do During Homecoming Weekend.” Something like that. I don’t know what they expected. When the faculty advisor refused to impose this editorial limitation, he was fired, and the print edition was canceled to prevent students from violating the restriction.

Okay, now I get it. This is indeed censorship.

One might argue that the University “owns” the newspaper and can make any type of editorial decisions it wants. A 1988 Supreme Court decision agrees. Even though the University is supported by the State of Indiana and the Constitution prohibits the government from interfering with freedom of the press, the court ruled that such protections do not extend to student journalism. Nevertheless, the University’s policy claims to give students autonomy over their papers, but they can obviously change it whenever they want.

So, anyway, I’m a bad listener. The TV report on this issue briefly explained the University’s restrictions and noted that the faculty advisor was fired for refusing to follow orders. The report was so full of rhetoric that I missed that essential issue.

There remains a component to this story that is woefully unaddressed. Why would the University want to limit the content of the print edition while allowing editorial freedom of the online edition? Student journalists argue that if they can censor the print edition, it’s the first step on a slippery slope to censoring online content as well. That is a legitimate concern. But again, why censor the print edition?

Any time someone’s motives are unclear, my approach is the classic line from the film version of “All the President’s Men.” Namely, “follow the money.”

Canceling the print edition in favor of the digital edition can legitimately be described as a sound money-saving business decision. But why impose editorial restrictions on print, not on digital? What is the financial motive here? Perhaps the University wanted to get out from under the $250,000 subsidy and was looking to pick a fight so they would have an excuse to cancel the print edition.

However, recent history in other cases shows that the excuse “It was just a business decision” doesn’t hold up.

Case in point, in July, CBS announced it is not renewing the contract for “Late Night with Stephen Colbert.” The show will end next May when the current contract runs out. Even though it is the highest-rated late-night show in its timeslot, they claim that it loses $45 million per year. They say it’s “Just a business decision.” However, we know that the parent company, Paramount, needed regulatory approval for a merger with Skydance and didn’t want to upset the administration. A few days after Colbert’s cancellation, the merger was approved.

Similarly, in the case of Jimmy Kimmel Live, media companies owning local affiliates were seeking regulatory approval for a merger. After the FCC Chairman made blatant threats to cancel broadcast licenses if Kimmel stage on the air, Disney/ABC suspended the show “indefinitely.” When faced with the public outcry, they eventually reversed their decision.

Indiana University is not seeking regulatory relief for a merger. So what else?

The Trump Administration has been withdrawing funding from major universities in its attempt to squash DEI programs and other allegedly liberal based policies. Is IU fearful that it will attract the attention of Trump? That doesn’t hold up. I would think that the online edition would more likely draw scrutiny than the print edition, which is distributed on campus in only a few thousand copies.

What follows is pure speculation on my part.

I think the keyword is “homecoming.” The campus was about to be flooded with alumni who are a source of income to the University. While on campus, alumni are likely to walk by a newspaper box and pick up a copy of the IDS.

Next question… What might students be writing about in the IDS that might upset wealthy alumni?

My speculative answer is “Charlie Kirk,” or rather, his legacy, the political organization he founded, “Turning Point USA.” Controversial pundit Tucker Carlson is filling in for the late Kirk by touring college campuses and promoting far-right-wing agendas. Perhaps the school administration was concerned that editorials or coverage of Carlson’s upcoming visit would be objectionable to wealthy conservative alumni. That is just speculation on my part.

Purdue University came to the rescue. Despite being bitter sports rivals, they produced a special print edition of their newspaper filled with articles written by Indiana University student journalists. They shipped 3000 print copies from West Lafayette to Bloomington, and they were available in newspaper boxes around campus in time for homecoming weekend.

Although most hypocrisy these days comes from the right, I don’t hesitate to point out hypocrisy on the left. I find it ironic and hypocritical that the same people who are crying out for freedom of speech over this student newspaper issue are likely some of the same ones who are protesting that the University allows Tucker Carlson and his hate-filled MAGA agenda on campus. As much as I despised Kirk, he did promote debate and dialogue. Freedom of speech has to protect objectionable speech because we don’t want anyone deciding what is or is not appropriate speech. These liberal snowflake students who object to speakers like Kirk or Carlson seem to forget that.

I’ve already proven I’m somewhat uninformed about the details of this controversy. Perhaps somewhere along the way, I will find some coverage that reveals the University’s hidden financial motives. I’m sad to report that’s going to have to be an exercise for the reader. I welcome any comments that can further enlighten me on the issue.

If the timing of homecoming weekend is really an issue in the IDS controversy, that suggests the assumption that alumni are more likely to read the print edition than the online edition. Do they really believe wealthy potential financial supporters of the University do not read online journalism?

Let’s explore that. My alma mater, IUPUI, no longer exists. Indiana University and Purdue University split, and now we have Indiana University at Indianapolis and Purdue University at Indianapolis as separate institutions. But back in my day, when it was IUPUI, the student newspaper was called “The Sagamore.” I asked myself, if I were to return to campus for a visit, would I pick up a print copy of The Sagamore just for old time’s sake? Yeah, I might just for nostalgic purposes.

On the other hand, why have I never, in the past 40+ years since I graduated, visited an online edition of the Sagamore? Simple answer. I don’t care. I have only minor nostalgic feelings about IUPUI. For me, it was simply job-training. I felt I had a better chance of getting employed as a computer programmer with a Purdue BS computer science degree than with some technical school training in computer programming. So there are limits to my devotion to my alma mater.

In an attempt to remedy the situation, I went looking for an online version of The Sagamore. All I found were archives of old issues. Why? The Sagamore no longer exists. And it’s not just the recent split between IU and Purdue. The Sagamore quit publication in 2009, and for a couple of years, there was no IUPUI student paper. Sometime in 2011, a new online student paper, “The Campus Citizen,” was founded and continues to serve both IUI and PUI populations today.

So, let’s move on to our second issue. At the core of this controversy is the inevitable shift away from print media to digital media.

Why do we still have print media today?

If we truly care about the environment, why are we chopping down trees, turning them into paper, and printing articles on them that will likely be out of date by the time the paper reaches our doorstep? In times past, not only was it common to get the Indianapolis Star delivered to your door each day, but you could also get other major newspapers, such as The New York Times or the Washington Post, delivered here in Indianapolis. A digital copy of these papers was sent from New York or Washington and printed on local presses.

Print newspapers seem to be an incredible waste of resources and energy. Sure, you can recycle newsprint, but how many people actually do? Subscriptions across all print media are declining rapidly.

Magazines are also on the decline. Is it really worth the expense to print publications like Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, or The New Yorker?

Text and photos traditionally found in newspapers and magazines are easily displayed online, and they can be enhanced with video, expanding what traditional print publications can do. Many traditional print newspapers include video interviews or other news videos in their online editions.

So, in our previous episode, we bid a fond farewell to quality broadcast TV. Let’s offer a similar moment of silence for print news media.

* * *

What about other printed material? One of the reasons the U.S. Postal Service suffers from declining revenue is the end of most printed advertising delivered by US mail. I used to wait with great anticipation for RadioShack catalogs. The famous Sears Wish Book was essential to making my Christmas list. No more. When was the last time you saw or needed a phone book or the Yellow Pages?

What about other books?

I understand the deep affection and nostalgia for having a physical book in your hand. For me, that’s no longer an option. I like the physical ability to handle printed material, so if it isn’t available online or in e-book format, I can’t read it.

But what about the rest of you? Is it really wise to keep cutting down trees, turning them into paper, and printing books and literary magazines? There’s something to be said that you own a physical copy that is yours to keep forever. You will also have the option to loan it to a friend or sell it to a used bookstore.

On the other hand, you can easily store hundreds or thousands of books on your personal computer or laptop and transfer them to your tablet or phone. Frequent flyers can bring their entire library with them on a business trip or vacation.

Given the cost differential between a printed book and an e-book as well as the environmental impact, do physical books still make sense iin our digital age?

I think not.

I attend a weekly writing seminar with award-winning science fiction author David Gerrold. He often speaks nostalgically about the days when it was easier for author to make a living writing science fiction. If you got a book published, the publisher would keep a few hundred or perhaps thousands of copies in a warehouse. If a bookstore ran out, they could easily reorder more copies.

David says that a “mid-level” author such as himself could earn a decent income from their back catalog, similar to actors who earn residuals from reruns. However, a change in tax laws declared that warehouses full of books are taxable, so it’s no longer feasible for publishers to keep large inventories on hand. Books that could still find an audience went out of print. However, e-books do not suffer the same issue. It costs virtually nothing for a publisher to produce more copies of e-books on demand. The shift to digital media should mean authors can keep their catalogs active for many years.

What are the risks of eliminating physical books altogether? Recently, there was an extended outage of cloud-based services provided by AWS which is Amazon Web Services. While we hope that Amazon, Google, and other cloud services have instituted sufficient safeguards and backups to prevent their content from disappearing completely, the risk is nonzero. What if we suffered an apocalypse of some sort? Would we have access to information necessary to rebuild technology and recover society?

I recently heard of a tale of an ancient library that caught fire. The librarians insisted that the library be allowed to burn down without interference. Why? The library contained thousands of Samarian clay tablets. If water was poured on the hot tablets, they would crack or explode. Letting the library burn down and allowing the tablets to cool gradually actually made them more durable, as they were re-fired in a kiln. I’m not suggesting we go back to the days of stone tablets but we need to find some sort of medium that is safely durable.

For posterity, what is the most stable means of archiving information?

Could it be magnetic media. Well, there are problems there.While going through some old boxes of junk, I was heartbroken to discover that I had nearly a dozen boxes of floppy disks both 5.25” and 3.5” variety. It is possible to buy a floppy disk drive with a USB interface but I didn’t want to waste money on such a device that I would only use briefly. I also had a strange format of digital backup tape. God only knows what kind of device would be necessary to recover that data. I also discovered an old computer tape known as a DECtape that was used by Digital Equipment Corporation mainframe and minicomputers. Such drives still exist in museums are owned by collectors but recovering such data would be impossible for me. So, although magnetic tape is fairly durable if you don’t have to play it back repeatedly, and it’s easy enough a fresh copy on new magnetic tape, I don’t think magnetic storage is long-term the solution.

These days, it’s all about the cloud. Many documents and spreadsheets that I used to keep on my hard drive I now keep in Google drive. My hard drives are no longer magnetic. They are solid-state drives. With the lack of moving parts, they should be safer than traditional spinning hard drives. I subscribe to a service called Carbonite which runs on my PC in the background and continuously backs up my documents to the cloud. Again, what happens if the cloud fails?

Recently I’ve been going through old videotapes containing home movies. I captured them on my PC and uploaded them to a family YouTube channel where my family and friends can continue to enjoy them for years.

But… How many years?

An estimated 720,000 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every day. That’s about 500 hours per minute. A good proportion of that these days is 4K. How long can YouTube continue to archive this material? Their current policy is that as long as a video is within its community standards it will “never” remove it because of its age. Can that be sustained for decades or centuries to come even if storage technology continues to improve? I don’t know. One of the reasons I switched from blogging to podcasting is that when I die and I quit paying for hosting services for my blog, my podcasts stored on Spotify, YouTube, and Patreon will endure much longer, sustaining my legacy.

Facebook recently instituted a new policy that automatically deletes Facebook Live videos after 30 days. You can download it. However, if you want to keep it archived and available on Facebook, there’s nothing to keep you from re-uploading it as a non-live video, which, under current policy, will not expire.

So what is safe? Important documents can be printed on acid-free paper and stored under controlled conditions, thereby extending their lifespan considerably. CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs can be quite stable. Dics that you burn yourself degrade in as little as 2 years but can last up to 10 years. However, commercially manufactured optical media are estimated to remain usable for up to 200 years when stored under proper conditions.

The bottom line for me is that I think that most uses of physical printed media are rapidly going to become obsolete. We live in a digital world and that is inescapable. Librarians, archivists, and policymakers will have to meet the challenges that come with this shift.

So, as always… if you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and other exclusive content. Although I have some financial struggles, I’m not really in this for money. Still, every little bit helps.

As always, my deepest thanks to my financial supporters. Your support means more to me than words can express.

Even if you cannot provide financial support, please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience. I just want more people to be able to hear my stories.

All of my back episodes are available, and I encourage you to check them out if you’re new to this podcast. If you have any comments, questions, or other feedback, please feel free to comment on any of the platforms where you found this podcast.

I will see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe everyone.