Student journalism will never cease, desist
By The Poly Post Editorial Board, September 30, 2025
With so many threats to freedom of speech and the press, professional journalists should unify now more than ever, and, in that unity, support and mentor student journalists while they are acquiring reporting skills.
However, our local colleagues and potential mentors from La Nueva Voz seem to see us as competition only. Imagine the disbelief that swept The Poly Post newsroom when we received a cease-and-desist letter regarding our name for our Spanish-language section, La Voz de Pomona, that focuses on Latinx coverage at Cal Poly Pomona and surrounding communities.
The La Nueva Voz publisher and owner sent us an email demanding The Poly Post cease and desist using the name La Voz de Pomona to avoid possible confusion with La Nueva Voz’s namesake. Despite only a word difference in the name, we were reminded La Nueva Voz owns the rights to the name. In no way, shape or form is The Poly Post above the law, and we had no intention of infringing on another publication’s livelihood.
It’s important to note that before The Poly Post received the cease and desist, there had been no prior communication between The Poly Post and La Nueva Voz about the similarity between our names. Should there had been conversation previously, and The Poly Post was blatantly ignoring this legal issue, a cease-and-desist letter would be more than appropriate. But this isn’t what’s happened.
It wasn’t until we had been running La Voz section for at least four years that we received contact from our senior and more experienced colleagues with a legal demand no less.
Our seasoned colleagues missed the opportunity to start a dialogue, to mentor us and help us learn how to deal with this issue and how to avoid trademark infringement. They could have reached out and let us know that there was a legal issue in a diplomatic way that wouldn’t instill fear in our student media.
We should be supporting each other to inform and better our community, but rather than given an olive branch to resolve things peacefully, we were handed a wedge to form a divide.
When our journalism students graduate and are looking to step into the wider field, they are going to lean into people who reached out to us and provided a sound learning experience, like the journalists students were able to job shadow during the 2024-2025 academic year.
We are going to stay away from the people who turned our developmental stages into times of confusion and stress because of the possibility of being sued over something that could have been a conversation-resolved issue.
We should be working to strengthen each other’s journey, not cause it to crumble. We are all working to be the voice for our local communities, but instead we were reminded that La Nueva Voz is the only community newspaper in Pomona.
We are Cal Poly Pomona students’ voice. As a Hispanic-serving institution, The Poly Post wants to give our students a platform to have a voice, por la comunidad de Cal Poly Pomona y la ciudad de Pomona.
However, we can no longer call our section that. Therefore, The Poly Post would like to introduce you to, “La Verdad,” our newly named Spanish-language section of The Poly Post that specializes in covering issues and topics that affect the Latinocommunity on campus. We look forward to continuing to highlight our community and reinvigorate the passion for our field.
New name or not, we at The Poly Post will continue to dedicate ourselves to serving our community, and to remind those who may think otherwise, that journalism, student-run or not, will never cease and desist.
Feature graphic by Connor Lālea Hampton
