Riding out the storm:
Find your way past roadblocks to save stories only YOU can do best
by Candace Bowen, MJE
Unfortunately, the pandemic is the perfect storm for high school media. Students have important stories only they can tell, but administrators really don’t want all these stories out there. On top of that, some admins are already finding ways to hamper reporting – or stop it altogether.
Being aware of these tactics and knowing how to combat them is vital as student journalists and their advisers start back to school this fall. Whether remote, face-to-face or some hybrid, the basic plan is to be sure student media coverage is thorough and professional, able to stand the scrutiny it might have to face.
So far, we’ve seen the usual – students threatened with suspension and punishment, even in states with New Voices legislation. But we’ve also seen more than usual budget-cutting and financial excuses for eliminating student publications. Then, too, FERPA – NOT an act that applies to student media – may again be an excuse to try to limit coverage, and HIPAA, also not applied properly, may become another excuse.
Read on to see how to react and what you may be able to do to stay safe and counter some of these strategies.
Read MoreWhen is free speech not so free?
by Candace Bowen, MJE
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
That may be a cliché, but it’s often spot on. And no more so than news lately of various orders and state legislation and school policies seeming to promote free speech. That’s a great idea, right?
Well, maybe not.
Read MoreThe next Woodward and Bernstein may be in your journalism class now
by Candace Perkins Bowen, MJE
Some say the next wave of great investigative journalists may be getting inspired now. Do you have a Pulitzer winner on YOUR staff? Are you teaching someone who could investigate the next Watergate break-in? What can you do to encourage him or her?
Sure, plenty of problems face today’s reporters: financial challenges for traditional newspapers, less-than-impressive wages, an attitude at the highest level of government that says media are the enemy, sometimes even threats of jail.
But Margaret Sullivan in the Fall 2017 Columbia Journalism Review had some good insight in her “Trump and the Watergate effect: Will young journalists still be inspired by today’s watchdog reporting?”
She remembers watching the Watergate hearings on tv as a child and realizing Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein made this all happen. “What these journalists did offered not only an important mission, but a gritty, roll-up-your-sleeves glamour. So, thanks to Watergate, Woodstein and Deep Throat, I was launched. And so were a generation of baby-boomer journalists—thousands of us. Some were in college in the mid ’70s. Others, like me, were in high school, or even younger.”
[pullquote]Will the reporters who are covering the Trump era — which, in some ways, is like the Nixon era with a special prosecutor, investigations into corruption and talk of possible impeachment — inspire today’s high school and college students to go into this career that can have a huge impact?[/pullquote]
In today’s world of fake news, of chants to lock up journalists and of an attorney general who appears willing to prosecute those involved in leaks, is there still a calling?
Will the reporters who are covering the Trump era — which, in some ways, is like the Nixon era with a special prosecutor, investigations into corruption and talk of possible impeachment — inspire today’s high school and college students to go into this career that can have a huge impact?
How do we help recruit the best and the brightest to make a difference for us all?
First, we need to refute some of the arguments against a journalism career. Sure, some newspapers are struggling and cutting staff, but some are not, and, more important, newspapers are not the only venue even for investigative journalists.
The Pew Research Center reports, “In the U.S., roughly nine-in-ten adults (93 percent) get news online (either via mobile or desktop), and the online space has become a host for the digital homes of both legacy news outlets and new, ‘born on the web’ news outlets.”
Exposés don’t have to appear only in the New York Times. According to The Guardian, blogs have revealed everything from contaminated dog food to a reduced number of U.S. attorneys. Good journalists can be there, too.
Then we have to convince students what those following the Watergate era knew: They CAN make a difference. The watchdog role of the media is still vital in a democracy, and, without it, we’ve lost the foundation of our government.
What do today’s college students think?
Ben Orner, senior journalism major at Kent State University, said his high school interest in covering sports grew when he reached college. “I was able to make the connections between my news consumption, what I was learning in classes and how this could have an impact.”
He said he can see how journalism makes a difference. “Whether it’s big like Watergate or like corruption in the local city council,” he said he sees how journalists have make a difference.
“The ‘Trump Era’ inspires young journalists to hold their leaders accountable,” he said.
Kent State sophomore broadcast major Gretchen Lasso said she thinks the recent political climate has made her a more vocal journalist. She acknowledges when she arrived on campus she was not a very critical media consumer. “Now I’m better able to analyze news and decide if it’s credible.”
She said criticism of the media has made her “work harder to verify my own sources” and be a better journalist in the future.
Who knows if Ben and Gretchen will be future Woodwards and Bernsteins, but today’s media climate has served to challenge and inspire them. Could that happen to students in high school now?
Our democracy needs watchdogs who are willing to consider low pay and taunts from some crowds as the price to pay for a better democracy.
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Tips for training ethical reporters
by Candace Perkins Bowen, MJE
What’s the best advice you can give your beginning reporters? What’s going to help them enjoy what they are doing because they’re doing it well?
Columbia Journalism Review had an outstanding article in mid-August by Adeshina Emmanuel and Justin Ray. “Top journalists reveal the best reporting advice they have received,” which covers a wide range of suggestions from keeping lists for future story ideas to starting at a small news outlet so you can make your mistakes there. (Maybe that applies to student media, too?)
But to me the best suggestions are those that warn young reporters not to have preconceived notions when they start to write an article. It’s hard to get at the truth that way.
An exchange with student reporters that always raises my hackles:
Me: How’s your story coming?
Cub reporter: I just need one more quote.
No! She may need a quote to show an expert view or make the article more lively, but the thing she really needs is more information – and not necessarily when she thinks she should go out and get.
In the CJR article, The Washington Post’s media columnist, Margaret Sullivan says she’s not sure where she learned this – maybe “Reporting 101,” but she still finds it helpful. “Report against your own biases. That is, include the reporting that has a chance of proving you wrong, not just confirming what you already think or think that you know. At the very least, this will allow you to know in advance what the objections to a story might be. It tends to make reporting more fair—and more bulletproof.”
The underlining is mine because this may be the most important lesson to learn about ethical journalism. Any reporter who approaches a story convinced about what he or she will find is going to miss the real story out there. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds can be so sure what’s right and wrong, real and false, they make assumptions that destroy their reporting.
So, the most important thing they need to learn is probably not AP Style or where to put the commas – it’s starting out with an open mind that will allow them to find and write the truth.
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Note: Another CJR article full of good suggestions and a link in this same CJR piece is “Eight simple rules for accurate journalism,” by Craig Silverman, written in 2011 but very true still today.
Read MorePrincipals, presidents and getting along
by Candace Perkins Bowen, MJE
The Washington Post headline asked, “Is media coverage of Trump too negative? You’re asking the wrong question.”
That’s when I realized this could much more than a political statement. What if you replace the president’s name with the name of your school? Does that sound like something you may have heard before?
Student media often receive the complaint: “Your stories are all negative. Good things happen at this school, so why don’t you report them?” But are your administrators maybe asking the wrong question, too?
Margaret Sullivan, media columnist at The Washington Post, said President Trump was like Judith Viorst’s “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” She cited a Harvard study that looked at news reports in print (The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post), main newscasts (CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC) and three European news outlets (The UK’s Financial Times and BBC, and Germany’s ARD). From these, the researchers concluded in Trump’s first 100 days about 80 percent of mainstream press coverage reflected negatively on the new president.
But the president of the United States and the principal of any public high school should not be enemies of their respective media. Sullivan said what politicians should look for in coverage – and I maintain this is true for school administrators, too – is “fairness, focus and overkill.”
- Sullivan asks if news organizations “acknowledge and correct quickly” when they get something wrong. My question: Do student media? Admittedly sometimes things are wrong because someone didn’t answer a student journalist’s questions, but that might be a good starting point for discussion on the importance of communication. If student reporters have the facts, their stories are vastly better.
- She further asks if journalists allow the president and his administration to respond to criticism. My question: Do YOUR reporters ask for responses, especially when the administrators are upset? That’s hard sometimes, but it’s another important part of communication. A consistent, ongoing dialogue is much better than seeing each other only when some problem arises.
- Finally, Sullivan writes, “Do news sites give serious, sustained attention to policy issues as well as publishing innumerable hot takes about the personality-driven dust-up of the moment?” I’m not so sure student media have “hot takes” that are “personality driven,” but I’ll bet most staffs would admit they may not be digging into policy issues like they could. If students are complaining about cafeteria food, what have they explored and reported about current cost increases of everyday staples, lack of government foodstuffs that used to be available, higher salaries for kitchen personnel due to union issues? In other words, complaints usually have costs or explanations. That costly Astroturf may have come from a generous donor, not funds that could go for textbooks. The guidance counselor who took so long to send a letter of recommendation to colleges might have twice as many advisees as the American School Counselor Association says. Digging deeper would show that.
The president and commercial media will have to sort things out on their own. Making sure both administrators and student journalists know the questions to ask – and the answers to have – is up to us and could go a long way toward eliminating problems.
Want lesson plans about fake news, misinformation or sourcing challenges? Curriculum will be available from JEA by the time you start back to school.
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