The Role of Student Journalism in Student Movements at Trinity College

This is a story about student journalism, by a student journalist.

I have been a student journalist for almost five years now, and I always believed that journalism was the answer to many problems in this world: we checked power, whether that was in government or on campus (or somewhere in between), we were the voice of the communities who didn’t have a platform, and we challenged authority by holding them accountable for their actions.

So, of course I was drawn to this topic as a project. It took a while to reach what you see in this story map, which is looking at two Trinity student movements from different eras, and analyzing how student publications play a role in those movements. I was originally going to compare administrative publications and student publications to analyze power relations between administration and students, but after I dug into my research, that seemed like an obvious issue that is discussed fairly frequently. There’s no argument about the divide between administration and the students. I wanted to dig deeper than that, and when I began seeing a pattern — a real disconnect — between The Trinity Tripod and other platforms of student voices surrounding these student movements, I discovered a more hidden issue, which is students’ own complicity.

Many of the conclusions I found in this research, and that you will see as you scroll down, broke my initial perception of student journalism. We were not the answer to the problems in these cases. In fact, we aided that problem. In this dark realization, I want to change that. I hope the student journalists reading this feel the same once they reach the end of this project.

This project is still a work in progress, and I welcome any feedback from those who take the time to meaningfully interact with and explore this story map.