KU student newspaper faced 80% funding cut. Campus media is needed now more than ever | Opinion

The kids are all right, at least for now. On Wednesday night, the University of Kansas Student Senate voted overwhelmingly to reject a student fee bill that would have sharply cut funding for the KU student newspaper — the University Daily Kansan — and sent the proposal back to committee for revisions.

The UDK has served as a training ground for Kansas journalists for more than 100 years. Wednesday’s vote gives hope the newspaper’s mission, along with its tradition of independent, student-centered reporting, will continue for the foreseeable future.

“I don’t know that we’ll get all of what we’re asking for,” Nick Jungman, the paper’s faculty adviser, said on Thursday morning, “but it sounds like student senators are insisting that we shouldn’t be suffering an 80% cut.”

Some context is needed here. For much of its history, the Kansan operated as a financially self-sustaining operation, using ad sales to pay wages to student journalists for their labors. And — as happened to newspapers across the country — that revenue stream dried up with the rise of the internet. So did the pay for writing.

By the time Jungman arrived in 2022, the UDK was running with an all-volunteer staff. It didn’t really work.

“They really didn’t have a responsible paid staff and a lot of things fell apart,” he said. “You know an organization like the Kansan thrives on older students coaching younger students, and knowledge is passed down from class to class to class over years and years and years.”

Volunteer journalists “just didn’t have the experience,” Jungman said. The paper became “a shadow of itself.”

Starting with the 2024-25 school year, the UDK received a bump in its student fee support — up to $3.64 per student — which allowed the paper to pay a staff of 16 that included editors, reporters and a trio of business-side staffers. It felt like the paper was finding its footing again.

Which is why those same reporters and editors were shocked to discover the Student Senate’s finance committee had proposed cutting the student fee to a meager 75 cents per student for the 2025-26 school year.

“They want to cut the Kansan to a fifth of what it is,” editor-in-chief Courtney Lane told the Daily Kansan, “and that’s a fifth of the amount of news and information that we can disseminate to students.”

The Kansans and its supporters swung into action, putting flyers in Allen Fieldhouse seats for Tuesday’s KU-Colorado men’s basketball game asking for help to “Save the Kansan.” By Thursday morning, a Change.org petition promoting the cause had more than 7,500 signatures from students, faculty and alumni.

All of that support probably caught the attention of the student senators who paused the proposal Wednesday.

The UDK isn’t entirely out of the woods yet. The student senators are working within budget constraints set by the Kansas Board of Regents, which authorized only a 2% increase in required school fees for the coming school year. They have to balance the paper’s needs against other services — such as health and transit — that KU students pay for and need. There has even been talk of shifting the Kansan away from a student-funded model to being supported directly by KU’s School of Journalism.

But the student journalists aren’t much interested in giving up their independence to be governed by university faculty.

“We’re a student newspaper,” Jungman said. “Students run this place.”

A question, though: Why should anyone who isn’t working or studying at KU care about the fate of the Kansan?

There’s that aforementioned “training ground” factor. Anybody who reads or consumes news in the Sunflower State has certainly come across the work of a UDK alum. Student journalism — at KU, K-State, Mizzou and at other colleges and universities across the region — produces the next generation of professional journalists who keep their communities informed.

And the challenges imminently faced by UDK students — how to pay for, produce and present journalism that’s relevant to their community — is the same one faced by professional journalists every day.

We’re all looking for answers.

“We’re one of the more public faces of KU,” Jungman said. “I think if there’s something happening at KU, a lot of people are gonna land on Kansan.com to find out what’s happening. It’s important that we’re presenting our best possible face to the public and giving them accurate and readable information.”

This story was originally published February 13, 2025 at 1:33 PM.