Authors: Marianna Lopez Luritta, Mckinna Baird
Mentors: Jean Norman
Insitution: Weber State University
This research explores the state of student media at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) given the decline of student media outlets in the past decade due both to the challenges of newspapers in general and the pandemic. It is an attempt to document the presence of student media at these non-White institutions, an effort that does not appear to have been completed before now.
Despite ample research on student media, there is a void of data specific to HBCUs and HSIs. Research also has been conducted on journalism programs at HBCUs (Crawford, 2012; Jeter, 2002; Sturgis & Johnson-Ross, 2019), but not addressing student media at these unique institutions. At least journalism at HBCUs have been researched. Hispanic Serving Institutions, a much newer federal designation, have been the subject of some work in the academy, but little if any research has been done on journalism, let alone student media, in these bilingual institutions.
The most current lists available show a total of 666 HBCUs and HSIs in the United States, including Puerto Rico (The Hundred Seven, 2018; Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, 2021). This study started by gathering information from the institutions' websites and social media, and by making phone calls to the newsrooms when no information was available on websites or social media. Through this initial step, we identified 220 HBCUs and HSIs with student media, including newspapers, radio stations, broadcasts, and podcasts.
This team deployed a questionnaire to learn more about these outlets to help us shed light on their production operations, publishing styles, diversity inside of the newsrooms, and work methodology. We also have created a unique dataset for future research on student media. We expect to have results from that survey in time for the conferences.