SMU Loses Student Media Co.,

Southern Methodist University - Big fight erupts over little paper

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          Student Media Co., the independent nonprofit that published Southern Methodist University's independent campus newspaper has been canceled.  Some alumni believe that the misfortune is associated with professor and journalism chair Tony Pederson. But he said it wasn't him.  "It just didn't work here," said Pederson, a veteran newsman who once served as The Houston Chronicle's executive editor.  "It didn't work from a financial standpoint, and there was nothing that we could do really to prop it up to the extent that would have to happen."  

          Alumni of The Daily Campus don't dispute all of that. The Student Media Co. did run out of money.  But a hostile relationship with the university's journalism department and clumsy management of the Student Media Co., dragged The Daily Campus down, they say.

          What's at stake is much more than just a little campus newspaper.  SMU is a crucial private institution in Dallas with a $1.6 billion endowment and nearly 12,000 students.  The Daily Campus was the primary independent voice covering a place that isn't subject to open records laws like a public university.  The failure of Student Media Co. has sparked a movement to save independent journalism at other American universities.

          The main problem isn't complicated.  In the digital age, Student Media Co. had the same broken business model as every other traditional print publisher.  But most others have scrambled to find new sources of revenue to sustain operations.  The Student Media Co. didn't make much effort, critics say. Now the Daily Campus will fall under the control of the journalism division as an online only publication.

          SMU student newspapers fill a rack in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center at SMU.  SMU's independent student media company is to be dissolved, putting The Daily Campus under the control of the school's journalism department.  Lauren Smart, a journalism professor who joined the board last year, is more critical of the fall of The Daily Campus.  A 2011 SMU graduate, Smart credits her time at The Daily Campus with getting her jobs, internships and acceptance to graduate school.  But Smart, the online adviser to The Daily Campus, sees the move as a way to rebuild the paper, which "really became a skeleton of itself."

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The Daily Campus has operated separately from the SMU journalism complex at Umphrey Lee Center, which holds the Pederson Broadcast Studio.