The news at the Indiana Daily Student lately has been grim; a fired advisor, a complete cut of print. But amid the upheaval and change in the student paper’s newsroom, there’s a small bright spot. A grant has allowed the IDS to expand its coverage to nearby Ellettsville. The $100,000 grant widens the news organization’s reach while filling a gap in news coverage in Ellettsville.
Ellettsville lies just seven miles from Bloomington and is often overshadowed by its larger neighbor. It’s been four years since Ellettsville has had consistent news coverage. In 2021, the local paper The Ellettsville Journal shut down. Around since 1939, the Journal was “the heartbeat of the community.” Without a local paper, Ellettsville became a news desert, or a community with limited access to local news.
“It’s been pretty well-publicized that so many of these smaller towns are either losing their outlets, like their newspapers or sources of home-town news, because of cuts from the Gannett company or funding issues,” said former student media advisor Jim Rodenbush, who oversaw the program.
The grant from the Hearst Foundations wants to fix this. The goal is to enlist student reporters to provide news coverage to rural communities in Southern Indiana.
The new program required a special person to lead it. Rodenbush needed a reporter willing to build the program from the ground up. He asked the editors-in-chief of the IDS for a recommendation and they zeroed in on one reporter. Senior Madelyn Hanes spent last summer covering state government for the Indiana Capitol Chronicle and they knew she had the necessary experience and reporting skills for the job.
“I didn’t want to put a reporter in a situation where they would parachute into a town and kind of not know what was happening,” Rodenbush said. “So I needed someone who would be willing to build relationships, have that reporting background and, most importantly, be enthusiastic about what this is.”
Interview with Madelyn Hanes
Jim wasn’t focused on content right away- he wanted Hanes to take the time to get to know the community.
“When you introduce yourself to a community like this, you don’t want to assume that they’re even interested. And so what I encouraged Madelyn to do is, don’t worry about content immediately,” Rodenbush said. “Worry about meeting people, worry about having discussions with the decision makers in town, worry about introducing yourself and explaining to enough people what the project is and what you’re interested in doing and then let them tell you what’s going on.”
Hanes dove in headfirst, scheduling meetings with the police chief, town manager and town council members.
“I’ve been putting myself out there in ways I never have before,” she said.
So far, she’s been very well-received. Town members have welcomed her with open arms, appreciating her focus on building trust before she begins reporting.
Hanes’ first story covered annexations in Ellettsville. She also hopes to cover improvement efforts in the local school district and how funding cuts from Indiana’s Senate Bill 1 has affected the town.
Hanes is building the foundation for a program that will have an increasing number of student reporters each year. The grant lasts for four years, but Rodenbush isn’t quite sure where the program will be in the future. Maybe it will expand to other towns in Southern Indiana, or the coverage in Ellettsville will become more robust. Mainly, he’s hoping for two things: enthusiasm from student reporters and a receptive audience.
“At first this role seems like it’s not needed or it’s not important for the Indiana Daily Student to do something like this, but I think in the future it will be very crucial, especially with the decline of news coverage that’s happening right now,” Hanes said. “I think this grant will help the IDS succeed and take that initiative to get out there and report on the unheard.”
