Routing around attempted censorship

The University of Southern Indiana Shield appears to have been the latest student newspaper to feel the wrath of self-appointed campus censors last week:

Sometime late Wednesday night, almost every print copy of The Shield disappeared from the campus racks. We distribute 2,500 copies of the Shield around campus every Wednesday afternoon, at locations like the Rice Library, the LA, and the UC. Though this is editorial speculation of the wildest sort, the disappearance of this issue might be linked to the fact that we ran the controversial picture from the latest edition of the Aerie (see Brandon Cole’s story for more information).

The problem is that the theft of the newspapers has brought the issue more publicity than before. The campus access channel has video footage, and the campus Republicans - who are apparently upset about the photograph - hosted a scan of the image that led to the newspaper theft on their web site.
More info from the Evansville Courier Press: Photograph leads to theft of USI newspapers, including this from adviser Patricia Ferrier:

The story ran with an editor’s note that said the staff had carefully considered whether to run the picture. Ferrier said she was not in favor of publishing it, but that it was the students’ decision and she was pleased with their process.

The photograph does not appear on the Shield web site, but it could have, which would have defeated the purpose of the censors stealing the newspapers.

At least one strong argument for putting a newspaper online is that such censorship becomes something of an exercise in futility. Something happened within the past four years at Emory & Henry that caused someone on campus to steal all the issues of the student newspaper. The article that elicited the theft was promptly placed online and a notice containing the link to the story was sent via campus e-mail to every student, faculty, and staff member.

FYI, 2,000 more copies of the Shield were distributed on campus last Friday.

via Romensko

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