About Us
For over 110 years, The State News has been a pillar of Michigan State University, East Lansing, Lansing, and surrounding communities. It is one of the last independent nonprofit Higher Education media organizations left in the country. Our off-campus media building sits adjacent to Michigan State University, a top global institution with over 55 thousand students and 10 thousand faculty centrally located within the East Lansing and Lansing, Michigan communities.
Founded in March 1909, The State News is the official student voice and independent nonprofit student media group serving Michigan State University. This student-run media organization operates StateNews.com and distributes a print newspaper on Tuesdays during the fall and spring semesters.
The State News provides a foundation, business operations, mentorship, and training of part-time paid employment to over 60 currently enrolled MSU students. These positions allow students to continue to develop skills, communicate effectively, think critically, and work cooperatively beyond the traditional classroom. State News alumni have had successful careers at The New York Times, ESPN, NowThis, The Wall Street Journal, NASA, Google, Microsoft, NPR, Chicago Tribune, CNN, Yahoo, and Politico.
Our student-managed, student-led newsroom of reporters, editors, photojournalists, multimedia staff, graphic designers, business managers, advertising sales, public relations, marketing, publishing operations, social media coordinators, web developers, and digital staff push the boundaries of media in an environment designed to innovate, experiment, and take risks while finding unique ways to serve our local businesses and readers in an involved and compelling way.
Through this innovation, we build skills that lead to impactful career-building opportunities beyond graduation. Our readers expect news, entertainment, opinion, commentary, and information that enrich conversations with our community. It goes without arguing that evolving lifelong news-consumption habits start with a newsroom operating on a publishing mission to provide diverse, trusted, ethical, unbiased, accurate, fair, and balanced media.
Students seek employment at The State News to develop their portfolio of skills, communicate effectively, think critically, and work cooperatively. Our non-MSU employed full-time professional staff provides the foundation, knowledge, and mentorship to foster an environment of learning and collaboration.
Michigan State University does not fund the State News. Operating independently as a separate 501(c)(3) nonprofit, we rely solely on advertising and marketing sales, a student subscription tax, and ancillary income. Because of this, our staff is free from prior restraint or censorship and allowed complete editorial freedom to make news decisions to inform our community and hold those accountable when necessary.
Our diverse, ethical, and accurate coverage has been recognized yearly by the most prestigious organizations in the industry, such as the Associated Collegiate Press, the non-MSU-employed Michigan Press Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists.
The State News' mission is to support and encourage responsible, diverse, trusted, ethical, unbiased, accurate, and fair media publishing to connect, explore, and enrich our readers' lives. We provide an open forum to the community for free expression and exchange ideas, concerns, issues, trends, and information. We offer employment to students in journalism, creative design, social media management, media production, photography, editing, business, advertising sales, web development, broadcasting, new media, and nonprofit administration at an award-winning student media company. We encourage the values of integrity, tenacity, creativity, and honesty in pursuing excellence.
Editorial board:
Editor-in-chief
Elizabeth Nass - editorinchief@statenews.com
Managing editor
feedback@statenews.com
Campus editor
campus@statenews.com
City editor
city@statenews.com
Sports editor
sports@statenews.com
Multi-Media editor
photo@statenews.com
Copy Chief
copy@statenews.com
Social Media Manager
social@statenews.com
