Editors and reporters at Colorado State University's newspaper may answer to a different boss in the future.

Colorado State University officials met with editors at the Fort Collins Coloradoan Tuesday to discuss a potential mutual ownership of the university's student newspaper, the Rocky Mountain Collegian, according to the Collegian's Web site.

Students protested the meeting because a buyout could place the Collegian under the authority of Gannett Company Inc., the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S.

The company refused to comment about the business deal.

According to the Collegian's Web site, the university's president, Larry Penley, went to the meeting and ignored the request of the Collegian's editor, J. David McSwane, to allow him to participate in the discussion.

The same officials who did not allow McSwane to participate also criticized him for publishing an editorial in September with the sole contents "Taser This … FUCK BUSH."

Neither McSwane nor the university returned The Daily Texan's phone calls by press time.

Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said the university looked into the possibility of removing McSwane from his position, but ultimately decided not to.

"The SPLC would certainly be concerned if a university tried to restructure a newspaper in a way that lessened student independence or that penalized student expression," LoMonte said. "Having said that, we don't know enough about what is going on at Colorado State to know the motivation of the university or to know how the paper might operate if it were sold."

It is not unusual for a private news corporation to "expand into the student media sector," but purchasing the Collegian would be different, LoMonte said.

Last year Gannett purchased Florida State University's newspaper, which was a free-standing corporation independent of the university.

The Collegian, which is located on the Colorado State campus and managed by the college publication board, is an "integral part of the university," LoMonte said.

"That's a little different wrinkle in the transaction and one that might understandably raise questions about the university's motivation," LoMonte said.

Purchasing The Daily Texan would be more difficult because of the Declaration of Trust set by the UT System Board of Regents, said Kathy Lawrence, director of Texas Student Media.

Adopted in 1972 and revised in 2007, the declaration establishes that UT student media is held in trust on behalf of the University's student body. A buyout would probably be determined by a vote of UT students, Lawrence said.

"What I think is amazing is that student newspapers are sometimes the last bastion of free press," Lawrence said. "People who are involved in this should think about how valuable an unfettered student press is to student development, because once that asset is lost, it'd be very difficult to gain it back."

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