The College Fix

Journalism is an indispensable tool for a free and open society

There is a great climactic scene in the Disney musical classic Newsies (a genuinely great yet bizarrely-underrated film) in which the scrappy street urchin Jack Kelly lectures the newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer: “There’s a lot of people out there, and they ain’t just gonna go away. They got voices now and they’re goin’ to be listened to…That’s the power of the press, Joe.”

The power of the press is very real, and has never been more alive than it is today. Case in point: last week The College Fix reported on the anti-white, anti-police, anti-heterosexual comments of Jonathan Higgins, the director of the Claremont Colleges Queer Resource Center. Shortly after our student writer’s report ran, the college announced that it would be passing over Higgins and looking for a different director.

In our reporting, The Fix took no position on the hiring or firing of Higgins, nor are we taking one now: personnel matters are largely the purview of college administrative wings. Nevertheless, this episode highlights both the critical role of journalism in a free society and the indispensable media sub-genre of campus reporting.

Barely a few years ago, after all, there was very little journalistic oversight on college campuses across the country. Campus newspapers have been around for decades upon decades, of course, and they have done and continue to do fine work. But for the most part, most of the campus has been insulated from any kind of outside media influence, existing in what Marxist academic Michael Burawoy called “a position of splendid isolation.”

That is no longer the case. Part of the change comes from the seismic shift from a largely-legacy media landscape to the dynamic Internet-driven model we have today. But a larger part no doubt comes from the unique outlets that have made campus reporting their animating principle. The College Fix, in particular, has done fantastic work in this regard, training and mentoring young journalists while utilizing their unique place on campus and in the thick of the controversies and goings-on of modern college life.

The best journalism outfits are not driven by agendas but by facts: the desire to find them, write them down and report them. As our colleague Dave Huber mentioned last week, there is a strange and growing class of college officials who believe that “their work and commentary simply are above reproach: Just sit there, accept it, and keep your mouth shut.” But real journalism has never and will never be a passive and silent and useless receptacle. Journalists bring information to light; we don’t know how to do anything else!

All of which is to say that we should not fail to appreciate the invaluable contributions of reporters and news writers, particularly as our current political and cultural era becomes ever-more contentious and the stakes become ever-more critical. To be sure, there is plenty wrong with a lot of journalism media today: the biggest and most respected outlets, for instance, have of late been given to chasing sensational stories and fantastical allegations that invariably end up either false or embarrassingly exaggerated. Responsible journalism knows how to tell the difference between what is real and what is merely alluring. Thankfully, that is the kind of journalism we do here at The Fix, and we pride ourselves on having an effect on the conversation and the direction of higher education in the United States. That’s the power of the press.

MORE: The College Fix reports on higher education – and we’re not going to stop

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