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Start the year strong while
promoting students’ press rights

Posted by on Sep 10, 2018 in Blog, Law and Ethics, Scholastic Journalism, Teaching | 0 comments

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by Lindsay Coppens

The Harbinger Adviser, Algonquin Regional High School, Northborough, Mass.

Although we may want to jump right into the business of putting out the first print issue or filling the website with killer content, there are steps you as an adviser can take at the beginning of the year to help your publication’s staff start strong while fostering their independence. These steps all connect with communication and establishing good relationships.

• Have a meeting with your editors-in-chief and the school principal.

It’s always a shame and usually doesn’t bode well if the first interaction between editors and administration is a negative one. Start off the year with good communication and establish a good working relationship with your school’s administration. While you may act as a facilitator at the meeting (or hopefully  just sit back and listen to most of it), it would be best for the student editors, not the adviser,  to contact the administrator for this meeting. This emphasizes the principal and editors should be the ones directly communicating most of the time, not the adults.

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