Adelaide Parker

Feature / February 2, 2026 The Future of the Fourth Estate As major media capitulated to Trump this past year, student journalists held the powerful to account—both on campus and beyond.

The Great Salt Lake Is a Ticking Time Bomb Retreating water levels are exposing stretches of cracked, arsenic-laden lakebed in Utah. Future dust storms will carry an extra hazard. Ad Policy People wade in the waters of the Great Salt Lake at Antelope Island in August 2021. (Justin Sullivan / Getty) This story was produced for StudentNation, a program of the Nation Fund for Independent Journalism, which is dedicated to highlighting the best of student journalism.

On a recent flight home to Salt Lake City, I gazed out the window and shuddered. The ground below was riddled with cracks. Sporadic green pools dotted the dry earth where vast water had once been. I was flying over what used to be an outlying stretch of the  — the largest lake west of the Mississippi River. Growing up, I used to row there with my crew team. I came to love the brilliant sunsets, along with the migratory birds that stopped there each year. This was not the lake I once knew.