College newspapers across the U.S. have faced retaliation from all angles — from administrators, students and even the very schools that should be their biggest defenders. 

The message to student journalists over the past few years has been loud and clear: stay quiet, or face the consequences. But journalism was never meant to whisper in the face of power.

The Miami Hurricane’s 2025-2026 editorial board has poured immense amounts of effort and time into our coverage. We’ve worked tirelessly to dig deeper, ask harder questions and report stories that truly matter to our campus community.

That work has not gone unnoticed. Students, professors and alumni regularly stop us around campus to share how much they appreciate our reporting. We have even heard from people in other states and countries who are following UM’s news because of The Hurricane’s coverage. 

The numbers speak for themselves — our social media following has nearly doubled since April, and our print editions have been flying off the stands within days of distribution. In October, our Instagram reached an all-time record of 1.73 million views over a 30-day period.

This increased level of relevance and visibility reinforced our responsibility to remain fair, accurate and unbiased in our reporting. Our goal has never been to please everyone. Even with the overwhelming positive feedback, not everyone will agree with, or like, everything we publish. But our mission has always been the same: to inform, to hold those in power accountable and to make sure our community has access to the truth.

The more relevant and visible we become, the less the university seems willing to engage with us. 

Despite multiple meetings and calls with University Communications since the beginning of the school year, our repeated requests for comment are often met with silence or responses delayed well past our deadlines.

Under standard procedure, The Hurricane works through University Communications to get quotes from our sources, which range from departments and administrators to faculty and doctors. 

However, our reporters frequently have to submit multiple media requests and follow up repeatedly — often without acknowledgment. In several cases, this lack of response has forced us to bypass our standard procedure involving the University and contact our sources directly to complete our reporting.

Administration’s reaction

Just a few weeks ago, The Hurricane published an article about the opening of SoLé Mia, UHealth’s new ambulatory center. This article was a simple, non-controversial news story about the opening and details of the center, but the University barely helped us. 

The Hurricane attempted to have UM facilitate interviews with leadership and doctors, but aside from a phone call that The Hurricane was asked not to quote, the only material the University provided was a press release that was eventually distributed after our print deadline.

After days of reaching out to UM, The Hurricane made the decision to go around the standard procedures and contacted doctors on our own for the article. After this, members from the University emailed the editor-in-chief asking how we got quotes from these doctors. 

Part of the email read, “we are particularly interested in why Dr. Lopes, an oncologist, is quoted giving revenue information on behalf of the health system which may or may not be accurate as that information was not provided by our chief financial officer.” 

As previously stated, the University offered no help in connecting us with anyone, let alone a CFO.

How are we expected to report on news affecting our campus if the institution we cover often refuses to engage with us and then criticizes us for finding information elsewhere?

If student journalists only repeated the information contained in press releases, which are obviously curated to cast the university in a positive light, we would be failing our community. Our role is not to echo, but to investigate. 

When the university we cover refuses to engage, it limits our ability to serve our readers — but it will not stop us. 

Student backlash

Students who write critical stories have faced backlash from their own peers in the past. The Hurricane has covered multiple incidents of fraternity misconduct in recent years. Frequently, these articles that report the facts about sensitive topics are the ones that cause the most backlash from students, especially from fraternity members. 

“[Greek life], I think, [is] a very close-knit community and people are very protective of their fraternity for understandable reasons,” said Jenny Jacoby, former editor-in-chief of The Hurricane. 

Most of the time, articles about fraternity misconduct report on issues that are already public. This includes Jacoby’s article that received a lot of backlash, particularly on social media, in 2024.

“I just think that they didn’t like that I was the one to push it to that legitimate level as opposed to just hearsay,” Jacoby said.

Fraternity brother backlash was not the only negative thing Jacoby experienced in her two-year tenure, but she said it was very eye opening and, at times, made her reconsider her career choice. 

“[My experiences] made me really, really scared of what a career in journalism would look like and made me question whether or not I could actually handle that for a career,” said Jacoby.

The message the backlash sends is scary: Silence is safer than honesty. 

When reporting on student news like possible hazing allegations, we are not whistleblowers or tattletales — we are journalists reporting the news to the student body. We are doing our job.

When we publish articles about student organizations, leaders of those groups frequently ask to pre-approve quotes, visuals or the entire article prior to publication. 

UM’s Black in Business was instructed by the university to rename itself “Belonging in Business” in compliance with Department of Justice guidance issued under the Trump administration, which restricted “discriminatory language” and DEI programs. 

Students involved in the article later told editors they were unhappy with the illustration and how their quotes were represented — even though the interview was recorded and they had full control over what they chose to say. 

As journalists, we can’t play this back-and-forth game of approvals and letting sources review quotes or drafts only for them to object after publication. We operate under two-party consent; we ask permission to record and our sources know they’re being recorded. They are responsible for their words at that moment. We can’t rewrite stories to ease regret after the fact.

At the end of the day, student journalism isn’t about making everyone comfortable, it’s about telling the truth, even when that truth challenges large groups or popular opinions. Backlash will come and go, but credibility lasts. Our job isn’t to protect feelings, it’s to report facts. 

Financial pressures

The Hurricane has also been struggling with funding, as our budget has not been reevaluated in years, even as Florida’s minimum wage increased. But this issue isn’t just affecting us at The Hurricane. 

At the annual MediaFest25 convention in Washington, D.C., our reporters spoke with Jim Rodenbush, the former Director of Student Media at Indiana University, who oversaw the Indiana Daily Student newspaper. IU’s paper is currently facing major funding challenges after Rodenbush’s termination, which led to its complete defunding after 158 years of being printed. Since then, Rodenbush has sued Indiana University over his termination.

The Indiana Daily Student is currently facing major issues with IU’s administration, especially after Rodenbush was fired. His termination came after Rodenbush resisted prior instruction from IU administration officials to stop publishing any hard news coverage. This decision has since been overturned, and the IDS has been permitted to use its 2025-2026 budget “as the editors see fit,” according to the IDS.  

“In September, we ran a story about the provost’s office and administrative bonuses that had not been made public,” Rodenbush said in a phone call with The Hurricane. “After that story ran, I was called into a meeting with university communications officials who expressed ‘concern’ about the paper’s tone.”

IDS is just one of many papers facing these issues. Now more than ever, students need a platform that empowers them to speak up and be able to form opinions on what’s happening in the world. 

There is no indication that the University of Miami would take similar action, but witnessing these cases across the country remains extremely troubling. We appreciate that UM has upheld its commitment to protecting the voice of its student media in this political climate.

Looking into the future

Despite these pressures, The Hurricane remains committed to serving the UM community with integrity, fairness and rigor. 

Through every unanswered email, every piece of criticism and every challenge, we’ve learned that journalism’s value isn’t measured by how easy it is — but by how necessary it remains. 

We will continue reporting the stories others avoid, asking the questions others won’t and holding our university to the same standard of transparency it expects from us. When students hold power accountable, they strengthen not just their campus, but the principles of accountability and trust that sustain it.

The Hurricane will keep doing what it has done for nearly a century: reporting the truth, even when it’s inconvenient. We report for our readers, for our university and for the future of student journalism.