This week, student journalists at Northwestern University held the school’s college football program accountable. The Daily Northwestern reported on an investigation into a culture of hazing, racism, and other terrible details at the NU football program for several years. The findings, and the waves they came in on, eventually led to head coach Pat Fitzgerald’s dismissal from the program.
In doing so, the student-run newspaper grabbed the sports media’s attention. The paper and its Twitter account gained significant notoriety this week, and, in many ways, all of it was more than earned. Among the many who The Daily Northwestern gained attention from was Pablo Torre.
Torre appeared on The Dan Le Betard Show with Stugotz on Tuesday. He waxed poetic about the work the student-run newspaper did this week. The topic intersected conversations on recent dramatic changes in the newspaper world. Such as the New York Times folding its sports division in with The Athletic.
“It occurs to me that as we are lamenting The New York Times, and the L.A. Times, and the Miami Herald, that… The Daily Northwestern is putting on a clinic in front of the entire country about the power of journalism,” Torre said. “As Pat Fitzgerald is fired yesterday in a way that we had foreseen on the show earlier that day, but nonetheless, was a pretty stunning reversal from what the President of the University had just done.
“Which is suspend him for two, effectively meaningless, weeks only for… the student newspaper, man, these insufferable–those dastardly, insufferable sports media members had the goods, and the story changed massively,” he said.
"The Daily Northwestern (@thedailynu) is putting on a clinic in front of the entire country about the power of journalism." – @PabloTorre after Northwestern fired coach Pat Fitzgerald amid hazing claims.
📺 https://t.co/8inSuXxi9o pic.twitter.com/K7Kc8lIXOi
— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) July 11, 2023
Miami Herald reporter Greg Cote, who joined the show, also praised the student media.
“More power to the student newspaper. More power to great student newspapers all over the country, including The Alligator at the University of Florida,” Cote said.
The Daily Northwestern has indeed done an incredible job this week. Everyone, for years, identified Northwestern for One Big Thing: Sports journalism. The sheer number of prominent sports journalists and media members who went to college in Evanston is astounding. And the program ranks as one of the best in the nation. It’s not like the kids are taught to be anything but the best at their job.
So from that perspective, it’s astonishing as well that Northwestern didn’t see this coming. But all credit and praise to the kids at the paper, who’ve earned every bit.
