18 college papers join in editorial

Eighteen college newspapers around the country published a joint editorial Tuesday denouncing a decision by USC administrators that prevented the editor of the Daily Trojan from keeping his job for the spring term.

The editorial said the student journalists were troubled by USC’s recent decision to reject Zach Fox’s application to retain the editor’s position, after a dispute with administrators over his efforts to reorganize the paper’s staff and obtain its financial records. A USC spokesman has said there was no connection between Fox’s budget request and the decision to turn down his application.

The editorial -- which was written collaboratively and ran in the Daily Trojan, Harvard Crimson and Stanford Daily, among others -- noted that the USC paper, unlike many student newspapers, is not fiscally independent of its parent university. Nonetheless, it said, “a meddling administration undermines the educational value of student journalism.”

Fox, a senior, resigned as editor last week in protest. He threw his support to an ally, junior Jeremy Beecher, who won a subsequent vote of the paper’s staff. USC’s media board, which has the final say, approved the choice.