New Voices podcasts
and valuable information
Looking for information and ideas to challenge students and expand their journalistic experiences, try these first offerings. From challenging concepts to story ideas and approaches, we’ll bring you occasional packages like today’s.
• We’ve launched a new podcast resource from the Scholastic Press Rights Committee — Conversations at the Schoolhouse Gate: The New Voices Podcast!
Our first six episodes are posted. Direct links below; you can find the podcast anywhere you download podcasts, including Apple iTunes and Google Play.
Episode 1 – Neha Madhira – EiC, Eagle Nation Online (Prosper, Tex.) Neha’s staff faced three rounds of censorship and prior review last year at PHS, and now she’s active in New Voices Texas.
https://pinecast.com/listen/9e9971c1-64ee-4f60-993b-229d9ecc3a3e.mp3
Episode 2 – Steve Listopad – Henderson State Univ. – Steve’s students in North Dakota kicked off the New Voices movement with a successful bipartisan bill in one of the reddest states in the country.
https://pinecast.com/listen/176c0e0f-29ed-4b6c-8d34-24debedd765d.mp3
Episode 3 – Kathy Schrier – Exec. Director, WJEA
The team in Washington were in this fight back in the early 90s, and stuck with it through March 21, 2018, when Governor Jay Inslee signed the New Voices bill into law!
https://pinecast.com/listen/f40e9aaf-bb3d-4b35-b5cc-bccffd0d6ac4.mp3
Episode 4 – SPLC 101
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/conversations-at-the-schoolhouse-gate/id1437339628
Episode 6 – Real benefits without review and restraint
Interview with Archer School for Girls administrator Gretchen Warner and student editor Anna Brodsky.
Subscribe to the podcast through iTunes or Stitcher or listen directly from this website.
Articles
• Trump’s USA Today op-ed demonstrates why it’s time to unbundle news and opinion content: Brought to us by Eli Pariser, originator of the term “filter bubbles,” this piece raises this point: “Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the whole premise of bundling together hard news and opinion content under the same brand names and domains. If we believe there’s something special about the processes and norms that create journalism (and I do), publishers should draw a brighter line around it — a line that both people and algorithms can understand.
“Moving opinion content onto separately branded sites wouldn’t mean getting rid of it entirely. But the whole practice of op-edding deserves a shakeup anyway, in an era where anyone can self-publish and content is experienced in an atomized form.”
• Do journalists spend too much time on Twitter: “A new study attempts to get at whether journalists ascribe too much importance to Twitter. Shannon McGregor of The University of Utah and Logan Molyneux of Temple University performed an experiment involving about two hundred journalists—some who use Twitter heavily and some who use it only moderately,” writes Mathew Ingram.
The results are interesting, to say the least.
Read MoreJournalism Against the Odds
by Cyndi Hyatt
Student Press Freedom Day is February 26.
This year’s theme is Journalism Against the Odds – how fitting for the bulk of 2020 and the beginning of 2021.
Last March who could have predicted the unfolding of a global pandemic closing high schools and colleges, cutting students off from campuses and classrooms, classmates and school staffs. Who would have predicted the shutdown of entertainment events, restaurants, sporting venues?
These past 12 months have been challenging in every way for students who want to cover community news in a predominantly virtual world.
The first few months of the pandemic were messy and difficult for student-run journalism programs trying to figure out how to keep momentum and how to find and report the important stories, how to battle administrations who wanted to curtail and limit their production in virtual and hybrid environments.
Student journalists, innovative and creative as ever, rose to the challenge producing newspapers, broadcasts, podcasts, news and literary magazines, yearbooks and social media adapted to the new normal.
Subsequently, these past 12 months created a new kind of student journalist, one who canrise to challenges, overcome obstacles and adjust coverage.
Against odds, they continued to report stories that mattered then and still matter now: Covid-19 and its effect on their communities, local government elections, the 2020 Presidential election, the 2021 Capitol insurrection and systemic racism and social inequity.
And many of these journalists stood up to barriers and attempted censorship challenging their freedoms and rights to cover protests, to criticize policies, to voice their opinions, to obtain public records, to record, report and tell the truth.
Despite the challenges, there is no better time to be a student journalist.
February 26 celebrates the successes and innovative reporting produced in the last 12 months. Embrace the First Amendment and its freedoms. Stand up to censorship. Get excited about the stories that still need to be told.
February 26 celebrates the successes and innovative reporting produced in the last 12 months. Embrace the First Amendment and its freedoms. Stand up to censorship. Get excited about the stories that still need to be told.
And don’t let the odds stand in your way.
Read MoreQuestioning Authority
Fallout from the 2020 election expands into a second impeachment trial. Mobs attack the Capital raising charges of unAmerican activity and sedition. Questions of whether not wearing masks and large groups partying extend our national pain of a nearly year-old pandemic.
It is certain scholastic media will address plenty of issues. Just recently Facebook and other digital media addressed questions about obsolescence of objectivity: Could it be obsolete? What does that mean for the emergence of advocacy reporting? Could media roles change? Should they?
Questions concern revision of ethical standards: to reflect guidelines that apply to the newest tools journalists use.
Questions would tackle takedown of published information and the potential impact of deleting historical memory.
Read MoreExpanding the First Amendment: State Laws and Student Voice
Return to Front cover Constitution Day 2020
Description: This lesson is intended to help students gain a better understanding of how state laws may expand student press rights beyond the First Amendment, as limited by Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier. Students will use SPLC.org to research their state’s status to see if it already has a New Voices law or an active New Voices campaign. All students will explore SPLC’s New Voices FAQ to learn more about New Voices and evaluate how press freedom might change or impact their educational experiences. If they live in a state with a New Voices law, they will read it and evaluate the extent to which their experience of press freedom aligns with that law. If they do not live in a state with a New Voices law, they will pick a NV law to explore. All students will reflect on what they have learned from this process by evaluating the legality of their current press freedom and discussing next steps for personal action.
Read MoreConversations at the Schoolhouse Gate
Episode 9: Photojournalism during school
The latest episode of the SPRC podcast Conversations at the Schoolhouse Gate focuses on setting the scene and then interviewing students and their adviser at Palo Alto High School.
Students dealt with authorities trying to block them from taking photos when a police officer was injured on campus.
You can listen directly from the website here or — better yet — subscribe on Apple podcasts or Spotify. This would be a great one to share with your staffs, also.
Student journalists at Palo Alto High School illustrate the tension between press freedom, public safety and ethics during a crisis at their school
In this episode, Menlo School adviser Tripp Robbins asks student journalists what they would do during a rumor-filled crisis at school and then interviews students at Palo Alto High School in California who actually dealt with one.
Students and their adviser, Paul Kandell, talk about the challenges of shooting photos of breaking news and lessons they learned.
If you are a student or a student media adviser with a story about scholastic press freedom, we want to hear from you.
You can reach us at sprc@jea.org with the subject line “Podcast” or tweet us at @jeapressrights. So you don’t miss out on future episodes, please subscribe to this podcast through any of the many podcast applications available for your computer or phone.
Read More