The Disrupted team is welcoming the new year by choosing a couple of the episodes we loved from 2025. We have so many favorites that we couldn't reair all of them, but these are some of the ones that we wanted to listen back to. This week, producer Kevin Chang Barnum chose our episode on student journalism.
Student journalists have been in the spotlight in recent years. In 2024, amidst massive on-campus protests, people turned to student outlets like Columbia University’s WKCR for the most up to date reporting. But practicing journalism as a student comes with risks.
Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk was detained in March after the Trump administration revoked her visa. U.S. District Judge William Sessions ordered her release on May 9th, saying the only evidence given for her detention was an op-ed she had written for her school paper.
This hour, we’re talking about the role student journalists play in covering campuses and the communities around them. We discuss the risks student journalists face and they way their role is sometimes overlooked.
GUESTS:
- Gary Green: Executive Director of The Student Press Law Center, an organization that supports first amendment rights for student journalists
- Anika Arora Seth: Editor in Chief of the Yale Daily News from spring 2023 to spring 2024
- Maria Shaikh: Managing Editor at The Retrograde, an independent student newspaper at the University of Texas at Dallas
- Macy Hanzlik-Barend: News & Arts director at WKCR, Columbia University’s independent student-run radio station
Special thanks to former CT Public intern Kathy Wang for helping produce this episode and hosting the student journalism panel.
Additional production support from former CT Public intern Angelica Gajewski.
This episode originally aired on May 16, 2025.
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