One of the nation’s premier journalism organizations today awarded 12 University of Cincinnati students its top prize for student investigative reporting among large universities.
Investigative Reporters and Editors, a 41-year-old nonprofit, chose “Robin Hood in Reverse” as the best piece of student investigative journalism among major universities in 2015. The finalists included a 27-person team from 19 universities chosen for the national News 21 initiative at Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism.
CityBeat published the story on May 6, 2015. It was researched and written by a dozen UC students, mostly juniors and sophomores, as a class project last spring.
The students examined athletic and academic spending at Ohio’s eight largest universities. Using NCAA reports filed by each school, the class revealed individual students paid as much as $1,226 annually to subsidize soaring athletic department deficits at seven of the schools, including their own. Using a Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics database, the class showed academic spending per student dropped over the past decade at six schools.
One IRE contest judge praised the story for showing UC students were particularly hard hit, “unwittingly paying more than $1,000 a year” to cover athletic deficits while “spending-per-student on undergraduate education dropped almost 25 percent in recent years.”
The judge noted interviews with UC students brought home the impact of spending decisions, citing several in the story: “ ‘It seems to be a corruption in education,’ said one honor student. ‘I didn’t come to UC for sports. I came here for an education,’ said another student.”
Drawing on scholarly studies and interviews with experts, the student journalists disproved the widely held myth that a successful athletic program translates into an increase in applications and donations.
Dr. Jeffrey Blevins, chair of the UC Journalism Department, says the award demonstrates the progress his department has made since it was formed just four years ago.
“What impresses me most is that our student work is competing with the likes of some of the best journalism programs in the country — Columbia University, Northwestern University, Arizona State University and the University of Missouri,” Blevins says. “We are a scrappy bunch, but we are making our presence known on the national stage.”
In past years, IRE has awarded its top honor for student investigative reporting to some of the country’s most renowned journalism programs, including Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
The 12 UC undergraduates who researched and wrote the story are very much like the working-class students they wrote about. Many in the class were like Katie Coburn, then a sophomore who worked 35 to 40 hours a week at two jobs while taking 18 credit hours.
“I am a working-class student. I have a ton of loans, I pay my own rent, my utilities and my groceries,” Coburn says. “All this motivated me to work harder because I was passionate about the topic.”
UC Assistant Professor Craig Flournoy, who oversaw the project, says his students created a template any reporter could use to investigate the athletic spending arms race and its impact on academics.
“Focus on schools in the same state or athletic conference,” Flournoy says. “Use NCAA reports to track each school’s athletic deficits over time and how much a student pays to subsidize those deficits. Use the Knight Commission database to track each school’s academic spending per student over time.”
The online version of the story includes links to the Knight Commission database and academic research, along with databases and charts detailing the students’ findings.
Once the students had this data, they interviewed officials, faculty members, experts and students, many of whom were unaware that they were footing the bill for the deficits and directly impacted by cuts in academic spending.
“Their quotes were among the most powerful parts of the story,” Flournoy says.
Coburn says she was humbled by the award and grateful for the experience of working on the project.
“Great work comes from passion,” she says. “Through this class, I proved that with my passion for journalism, I can make an impact before I graduate, before I’m even considered a professional journalist. I am a student, but I can still make a difference. That is what I proved to myself.”
Along with Coburn, the students recognized for work on the story were Morgan Batanian, Fernanda Crescente, Taylor Jackson, Tyler Kuhnash, Camri Nelson, Taylor Hayden, Talis Linauts, Kayleigh Murch, Matt Nichols, Malia Pitts and Lauren Smith.
The full list of 2015 IRE awards winners can be found here.
This article appears in Apr 6-13, 2016.
