I’ve worked at The Daily Mississippian long enough to be familiar with the nickname its haters have dubbed it — The Daily Mistake.
Sure, as a student writer and editor, I have made errors, just as every other journalist has. However, the heart of The Daily Mississippian, and all student media, is in being an information service for the campus community.
When student journalists do inevitably mess up, however, there is a peculiar positive emotion I feel when their readership corrects their errors.
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, scandal was ridden throughout their student newspaper on April Fools’ Day when the publication released insensitive satire articles that featured reports of false U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) threats, puns regarding Israel’s conflict with Gaza and the erasure of Indigenous communities.
The Daily Tar Heel’s April Fools’ Day content included a print paper, newsletter, social media posts and online publication. Some of the paper’s student readership even started calling out the lead editors involved to resign, and a petition of UNC alumni and former DTH editors echoed these sentiments. After this, the editors met and the Opinion Desk editors elected to step down from their positions.
My hat typically is off to The Daily Tar Heel; much of our staff considers them the cream of the student paper crop. In creating this holiday edition, however, they were very wrong in their decision-making process.
The Daily Tar Heel missed the mark with their over-execution of attempting to “shed light” on serious contemporary issues facing the nation, but it is worth shedding our own light on the fact that students cared about what their newspaper was publishing. Students took to TikTok and other social media to express disappointment and frustration with their newspaper.
Readers should be holding their student-run outlets accountable because these media matter — the publication’s reporting and communication to the student body matters.
I admire the accountability that readers of The Daily Tar Heel took to the editors of the paper. I wish it happened on a broader, more national level.
Around this time last year, President Donald Trump was making plans to defund the Public Broadcast Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) via executive order.
As a Mississippian and student editor, I contacted my senators — Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker — to relay my concerns about Trump’s plans. I never heard back from Hyde-Smith, but I was delighted to see that Wicker addressed my concern in an email:
“As a strong supporter of local broadcasting, journalism and free speech, I am encouraged by the modern media landscape because it provides diverse news options for breaking stories, political analysis and public safety updates. I support President Trump’s initiative to prevent PBS and NPR from accessing federal funding. Unlike other broadcasters, PBS and NPR benefit from federal subsidies their competitors do not receive. Federal funding is just one of many revenue streams for these public broadcasters, and they can remain sustainable with continued funding from other sources, including state funds, corporate sponsorships and fees from member stations,” Wicker said in the email response on June 17, 2025.
Though I appreciate that I actually received a response to my email, I do still, of course, have my reservations about his perspective.
What the average citizen may not realize is that with the elimination of PBS and NPR, many stations will lose their only access to reliable news coverage, particularly in rural, low-income areas of the country. Local news outlets are closing in record numbers as ad revenue and subscriptions drop, further exacerbating the news desert epidemic.
Dwindling access to quality local news inevitably means student media is what remains standing. Yes, your student journalists are who you may have to rely on for reliable truthtelling.
We’ve seen other examples of media silencing in the last year, too.
The University of Alabama suspended two student-run magazines in December 2025 in alignment with federal diversity, equity and inclusion guidelines from former United States Attorney General Pam Bondi. Many of the students behind these publications released two new independent magazines, which was made possible by MASTHEAD, a nonprofit organization run by Alabama alumni that fundraised more than the $25,000 goal it originally set.
Though Alabama’s student magazines should never have been halted in the first place, it was refreshing to see alumni unite to support student journalists.
In the cases of The Daily Tar Heel and Alabama’s magazines, one common sentiment stands true in an era where quality news feels so scarce: Readers care about and trust their student media.
At The Daily Mississippian, we have faced our own drama.
Last year, we faced minor backlash for including a comment from a Trump supporter the morning after the 2024 U.S. presidential election saying that he wanted to “stop the trans epidemic.” This decision to include his statement was made not to give this voice positive endorsement but rather to acknowledge that these types of ideals exist on our very campus — and not in a satirical way.
As the arts and culture editor in the 2023-24 academic year, I wrote an article commissioned by then-Sports Editor Cameron Larkin called “Bleacher bandits: pledging allegiance to actives.” This story detailed alleged hazing in fraternities from a former pledge and spotlighted bullying by members of these organizations in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. I faced my own personal backlash for this and experienced personal attacks on X.
“Clay Hale is softer than baby s–t,” one user wrote.
But this was worth it — because I was putting to light something that mattered.
When students stop caring about the media that is supposed to represent them, we collectively lose. In a time when news deserts span counties on end, it is encouraging that readers care enough about what their university paper is doing.
Keep commenting on our posts. Keep sharing tips for stories. Keep picking up Thursday papers. When feedback flows, our staff’s motivation to share meaningful stories grows.
Who knows — student media may be the subgenre that survives and revives the rest.
Clay Hale is a first-year graduate student studying integrated marketing communications from Water Valley, Miss.
