North Idaho College Sentinel ends 90-year print run, goes online only

North Idaho College lost more than a newspaper when The Sentinel stopped printing. The change ends a physical campus institution that helped train student reporters, editors and photographers for generations, and it leaves the college with a newsroom in Boswell Hall, Room 148A, but without the paper copies that once carried campus news into classrooms, offices and homes across Kootenai County.

The Sentinel’s last physical edition was released May 1, and the student publication now operates online only. NIC still lists the newsroom on its Coeur d’Alene campus, and The Sentinel continues to describe itself as the college’s award-winning student newspaper and news organization. But the shift marks a major change in how students, faculty and readers will encounter campus reporting, with the familiar printed product giving way to a digital format that depends more heavily on web traffic and online habits.

College leaders tied the end of print to sudden budget pressure from the state. Gov. Brad Little signed a March 17 law cutting funding for most state agencies and departments by 4% in fiscal year 2026, reducing the general fund portion of the state budget by $131.3 million and eliminating 110 full-time positions across state government. That action extended prior 3% holdbacks and added another 1% cut for most agencies, adding to financial strain that already reached North Idaho College at the start of the 2025-26 school year. NIC also faced a 3% reduction to previously allotted financial aid, with more cuts expected in 2026-27.

At roughly $4,000 per issue, print was one of the easier expenses to cut, but it was also one of the most visible. The Sentinel’s roots go back to 1934, when archival copies show the Jaycee Journal was edited and published weekly by the journalism class of Coeur d’Alene Junior College. The paper later shifted to a student-requested magazine format in 2017, but the final move online closes another long chapter in a publication that has long served as one of the county’s training grounds for future reporters.

For student journalists, the transition is personal as well as financial. Managing editor Megan Morrison and junior editor Anastasia Dickey both described the final issue as a point of pride and a sad milestone. Dickey’s Sentinel bio says she is a second-year NIC student who hopes to continue her education and journalism career after graduation. The paper’s disappearance from print comes even as NIC says it serves Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and Rathdrum, offers more than 80 degrees and certificates, and enrolled 4,570 students in spring 2026, up from 4,267 a year earlier. That makes the loss of the printed Sentinel less a sign of shrinking campus life than a sign of how state cuts and changing media economics are reshaping who sees college news, how often they see it, and what kind of permanence student journalism can still claim.