Courtesy of Poynter.org & Romenesko: http://www.poynter.org/
http://www.insidehighered.com/insider/hitting_too_close_to_home
<...> Fallout from the article did not stop there.
In the days after Reiss made her open records request, John Pavlik, chairman of Rutgers's journalism department, told Guy Baehr, the instructor in the investigative journalism course, that administrators would renew the class for the spring only if Baehr altered it so that students covered stories off the campus, not on it.
(Pavlik acknowledges that complaints about Reiss's article were "a factor" in this decision, but cites many others, too.)
Baehr, a part-time instructor who does not have tenure, reluctantly agreed to the change.
The turn of events troubles Reiss, Baehr and some others at Rutgers, which was the scene a few years ago of a highly publicized battle in which administrators sought to squelch press freedom in the interest of protecting athletics.
Linda Steiner, an associate professor in the journalism program, is no fan of Reiss's article. She thinks it "spun" the facts in a way unfair to Rutgers athletes, since many of the perquisites Reiss described are available to international students and others at Rutgers, and are common in athletics departments around the country.
Still, the Targum "has run much sloppier stories" than Reiss's, Steiner says, adding that she suspects editors gave her article "some particular scrutiny because they are protecting the athletics department."
Steiner is "shocked," she says, that the newspaper decided not to run the article as an ad: "I suppose they have the right to do it, but it doesn't seem consistent with what a daily newspaper, including a daily student newspaper, ought to be."
And the changes Rutgers demanded in the investigative journalism course are "outrageous," Steiner says. The course was "doing exactly what it was intended to do, and the students were reporting on precisely the kinds of things they should be reporting on -- stories that interested them" in their own backyard. <...>
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