Their updates arrive in a hurry. A studio host's calm voice narrates the scene of a protest camp at Columbia University in Manhattan in real time as more than a dozen students cover the moment police in riot gear enter. The journalist's situation was broadcast live. They occupied a university building on Tuesday night.
“Do you have a field reporter in Amsterdam? If you could get a field reporter, we have received information that an arrest has been made in Amsterdam.”
“Sorry, Sarah, should I go?”
“It’s getting really difficult to report from this vantage point.”
The stream from Columbia University's student-run radio station WKCR was so popular that night that it crashed its website. When pro-Palestinian protesters occupied Hamilton Hall, their demonstration became one of the most extensive broadcasts from the scene, as professional journalists had limited access to the school.
The same is true across the country, where student journalists provide some of the most detailed and interesting coverage of protests engulfing campuses. The Brown Daily Herald reported on negotiations between the school's board of directors and local protesters. The University of Southern California's newspaper The Daily Trojan, Dartmouth College's The Dartmouth, and the University of North Carolina's Daily Tar Heel are providing live minute-by-minute coverage on X, Instagram and their websites.
The journalists' efforts earned rare praise from the Pulitzer Prize committee, which highlighted in a statement the “extraordinary real-time coverage of student journalists at Columbia University and across the country,” and said, “I reported under the circumstances, putting myself at risk.” Arrested. “
Four student journalists were assaulted at the University of California, Los Angeles, according to the Daily Bruin and the Los Angeles Times. The Daily Bruin reported that the assault occurred after the student journalists were denied access to university buildings by security guards.
The students didn't get everything right. On Tuesday night, WKCR incorrectly reported that the New York City Police Department used tear gas as officers entered the building. The ministry later announced that tear gas was not used. The station issued multiple explanations on the air.
Meisin Handzlik Barend, a Columbia University junior who helped coordinate the coverage Tuesday night, said initial reports were based on a “smell” and a fire alarm going off inside Hamilton Hall.
However, the overall coverage of the protests by student journalists has been widely praised.
“The big thing about this article is that they're writing about their campus, their friends, and to some extent themselves,” said Bill Gruskin, a professor at Columbia Journalism School.
Emmy Martin, editor-in-chief of the North Carolina Daily Tar Heel, said coverage of the protests had taken a psychological toll. On Tuesday, police arrested protesters in the university's main quad, the newspaper reported, saying many journalists were “still struggling to process much of the content.”
“We are journalists, but we are also students,” Martin said. “Many of us have friends who are protesting. Many of us have friends who have been arrested.”
Wednesday and Thursday were quiet days for WKCR students. The station said after finishing the interview Tuesday night that reporters would undergo “much-needed physical and mental recovery.”
The roughly 20 student journalists working there rotated through the first half of the week, ensuring at least one person was staffed in the studio at any given time. Some were sleeping in an auxiliary studio the station uses to record live music.
“I slept in Butler Library for 30 minutes” Monday night, said Ian Pumphrey, a Columbia University student who was a reporter for the station on Monday and Tuesday. “Then I went out and continued my coverage.”
When asked if he did any schoolwork this week, Pumphrey simply replied:
“I mean, no.”
