This headline appears in the CJ:

U of L finds millions for sports but looks to cut newspaper funding.

Another headline says:

3 things to know about UofL’s student newspaper potentially losing funding

Read the above stories, and you’ll see that UofL is trying to introduce a student fee to run the student newspaper. And the CJ compares that fee to what students are paying for the sports program.

Quick revelation: The sports programs bring in tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue for the university. The student newspaper: little or nothing. It’s like comparing apples to nuclear submarines.

I know something about college newspapers. Over my journalism career, I was involved in hiring or vetting thousands of students seeking internships with my former newspapers. I’ve spoken to college classes and participated in numerous job fairs and journalism conferences.

Most important, a student newspaper should NEVER rely on funding from its respective university. If you look at a list of the most impressive school newspapers (click the link), you’ll find that practically every one of them are totally independent of their schools. The students not only write and edit stories. They also are in charge of brining in advertising and overseeing circulation and production. Even the University of Kentucky’s Kentucky Kernel is included on the list, which says:

The Kernel has an incredible readership of over 30,000. The newspaper has been editorially and financially independent from the university since 1972 and is funded through advertising. Online, it is updated every day.

Although the paper has a staff of under 20 students published on their website, it is still one of the most impressive papers in the nation. It has received the National Pacemaker Award from the Associated Collegiate Press three times in the years 2015, 2008, and 2006. About 150 days out of the calendar year, an edition of the Kernel is published, and it offers the most in-depth coverage of the Lexington campus and surrounding metropolitan area. Former staff includes Disney writer and illustrator Don Rosa, Associated Press Chief White House Correspondent Terence Hunt, former National Geographic photographer Sam Abell, and more. The Kentucky Kernel is the most widely read newspaper in all of Kentucky.

Let that sink in. The CJ has a circulation of 29,000. The UK student newspaper has more readers.

This represents a failure of the UofL journalism program. The faculty isn’t teaching students how to run a news operation. I doubt they’re offering much encouragement to students planning to go into the profession.

In recent years, I oversaw the internship program at the San Francisco Chronicle, and I received thousands of applications from all over the country. I specifically sent our annual internship announcement to the UofL journalism department, and although I received applications from students at Indiana and Kentucky universities (IU, Purdue, UK and WKU among others), I got maybe one application from a UofL student.

The Cardinal shouldn’t even have to ask the university for funding. It bills itself as “The University of Louisville’s Independent Student News Source,” but “independent” should mean it’s financially independent from the university as well. Don’t rely on the people who want to control you to give you money.

The best student newspapers in the country are completely financially independent of their universities, because they don’t want the school to tell them what they should or shouldn’t write, and they don’t want to be in the financial situation the Cardinal finds itself in now.

Besides, what’s the CJ doing to support student journalism? I have no connections there, but I wonder, does it have a freelance budget where it could pay student reporters to do things like cover various sports it’s not able to staff or provide features on interesting events on campus? Something simple like pay a student 50 bucks for a story to ensure the kid can compile clips to form a portfolio, making it easier to apply for internships while they’re still in school and for jobs when they graduate.

The local paper can wring its hands over the state of student journalism, but if it isn’t doing anything to encourage the next generation, its opinion pieces are irrelevant.

If you want to follow an encourating story on student newspapers, take a look at what Purdue did to help out Indiana University, when IU tried to censor its student newspaper.