Does prior review have educational value?
Or, what students learn when they submit to prior review?
From SPRC Vault 2 | Prior Review
by John Bowen, MJE
The last From the SPRC Vault focused on April Fools and other knowingly false and potentially dangerous publishing. It is potentially dangerous because it could lead to legal, ethical and negative situations that bring prior review, fear of negative public relations and misperceptions about the role of student journalism.
A recent story from a Kansas high school showed the strength of effective student journalism. It also delivered a timely message how and why prior review can limit knowledge communities need to know.
Journalism students at Lawrence High, Lawrence, Kansas, convinced administrators to remove journalism students’ files from an AI driven surveillance system.
Four journalism students spent months, they said, interviewing administrators and others about how the surveillance system invade student privacy and might violate First Amendment protections. Kansas is one of 17 “New Voices” states protecting Student First Amendment expression.
To see the article about the students’ fight, go here. Prior review art by Pixel.
If we closely examine reporting about prior review by school officials, we would likely find prohibiting unprotected speech ranks lower than squelching protected speech. These aren’t the only causes given for prior review. Others include: bad pubic relations which make the board, city, voters nervous and threatened. Plus anything school officials don’t like, afraid of feedback and the principal sure the school will greatly suffer.
Why? Because articles resulted in three phone calls? Or seniors did less than well on recently changed state graduation tests and the controversial book banning attacks from the local, and active? Review is the common solution to deal with highly charged issues. It existed before the 1950s.
As a novice publications adviser in 1972, one of my first tasks was to peruse newspaper archives which beginning with the first issues, 1921. Since the paper was well-known was because students published weekly as a broadsheet medium and printed in the school’s printshop.
The first obvious example of school official content intervention was in the ‘50s and involved removal of reporting teens motorcycling to school, bopping at all hours on the streets and all the anti-society issues that follow motored bikes. Or that movies suggested happened. Administrators found out about the story and asked to see it.
The magic word, instead of controversial but well done, seems to be control.
You can guess what came next.
Admins banned the story saying such radical content would enflame the community, parents would complain and property values would drop if publication occurred..
The article was published, but not for the public. They missed seeing the figurative red tide of knowing about motorcycles.
Reporting in the ‘60s did not ease fears or prior review.
Times changed after the ’50s. The 1969 U. S. Supreme Court Tinker v. Des Moines decision was the first of many cases (some sources say at least 60) reinforcing the idea school publications should be more than public relations tools.
Student journalists had opportunities to practice constitutional guarantees in some schools, but not everyone was thrilled with the Tinker decision. Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Susie Gharib wrote in 1982 many greater Cleveland area administrators said, “…image is the issue” over content of school papers, and that “school administrators don’t want parents to have a bad image of their school.”
A 1985 article in National Association of School Administrators by Lu Fulbright, “Tips for Principals,” noted “Principals have been tossing and turning at press time since 1969, when federal judges ruled in Tinker students do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.’”
The problem, Fulbright wrote, was “how do you formulate rules that uphold all students’ rights and protect the school environment?”
Common topics concerning school officials then were prior review, which included the war, the draft, poverty, racism, drugs and other ills of society. These helped Fear escalate an uneasy of sensitive concerns. Prior restraint, already saturated with plenty of Fear. Increasing instances of prior review was the napalm of education and not far behind.
As prior review and restraint continued to balloon in the ‘60s and ’70s, changs in scholastic media seemed to accelerate accordingly. Attitudes of Question Authority, about the war, the draft, Imperialism, drugs and death quickly mutated in an already toxic atmosphere. In some ways scholastic media, assisted by court decisions, particularly Tinker, mirrored the tension fanned by Fear and censorship.
In many ways, student journalism opened people’s eye on hatred and racism as music heightened ideas of social responsibility. Society and schools moved as quickly to shutter eyes just opened to society’s ills.
Today, as then, the outcome of lawsuits, protests and walkouts supporting free expression in schools, along with other student concerns, is mixed.
For example, few if any federal court or Supreme Court decisions prevent prior review. None I know of mandate it. That suggests no formal or legal standard exists of “Tinker” or “Hazelwood” states. Schools may follow Tinker or choose Hazelwood, depending on defining responsible legal terminology. The state does not dictate review status.
Concepts such as “legitimate pedological concern,” forum for student expression, who has decision-making control of content and editorial policy become almost subversive in the fight to end censorship.
Important questions remain about challenging review
In 1983, following numerous court cases granting students expanded free expression rights, graduate student Nicholas Kristoff (and later professional journalist, columnist and activist) further explored the intensity of Fulbright’s views. Kristoff conducted a national study which he called “a conservative view” reflected four main arguments in support of restraining expression on high school campuses:
• Free speech would lead to insubordination and would undermine respect for teachers to the point students would learn less;
• High school students are not yet mature enough to handle publishing responsibilities;
• Censorship is not an issue of rights, but an issue of how to teach good journalism. The paper is not seen as a forum but a laboratory project for the teacher to use in the journalism class;
• Censorship is a practical necessity to screen for libel and to prevent community outrage.
Kristoff strongly disagreed with Fulbright and offered four counter-arguments against administrative censorship. He called them the liberal view:
• Rights, not authority and discipline, prepare students for roles as citizens in a democracy;
• Potential for abuse is not seen as a sufficient reason to withhold a right or privilege;
• Since a newspaper is a forum of ideas, with ideas there is no right or wrong;
• The solution is to hold the students and the newspaper, not the school, liable for damages.
The conservative view, he wrote, “reflects an authoritarian tradition in education that sought to imbue youngsters with respect for their elders as a moral value.”
“It would be absurd,” Kristoff continued, “if a student could criticize his congressman but not his principal, if he could protest draft registration but not his school’s attendance policy –- those things the student has the greatest chance of affecting.”
Censorship, he wrote, is the greatest threat to order because the conflicts it engenders spill over to the classrooms and distract students.
Student journalists able to ask thorough questions about prior review or restraint, suggests students make sound journalistic decisions and actions without review and restraint. They should have knowledge of court decisions and how to apply their interpretation. They should have situational training in ethics. They should know their publication’s mission statement and how it works with an editorial policy and ethical guidelines All interact tone a foundation for journalistic excellence.
Student journalists need to explain positives/negatives of working as designated public forums so stakeholders trust and believe in student actions, without uninformed administrative interference.
Students need questions to ask those who favor unfettered prior review, among other legal and ethical issues. And, they need to perceive and respond to answers. Actions need to calmly, rationally and clearly outline the crux of issues so others see training, skills and principles journalism students bring to their work.
Students, who have been censored and not encouraged to think for themselves or research material for themselves, will not see any need for the media to do so. Those who have been censored and told the tenets of democracy exist only in textbooks and only for those of a certain age may come to believe it.
Question Authority was a common activist saying in the ’60s. In the next several decades journalists added: And question what they tell you.
Authoritarian governments, when seeking control, “always first control the press because they control the way people share information and ideas,” wrote Robert Dardenne in his Poynter Paper, A Free and Responsible Student Press in 1996.
We seem to be back to the magic word: control.
Dardenne indicated the student press and the professional press share information with their communities, which are sometimes the same, and thus should be treated the same.
“Students are not exempt from responsibility and decision making,” he wrote. “Therefore, they need information a free student press can provide and help them share. The student press provides a model that helps all the students in the community learn how to form and discuss ideas, think critically and analyze information and it encourages them to get involved in their community.”
Remember, it’s not prior review and restraint that brings educational value to those who need accurate, complete information in context. It’s the credibility and integrity of student journalists who appl values of what competent advisers encourage and guide.
These are issues student journalists might raise, questions they might ask so all sides can move forward … together.
• What is the purpose of the review? To prevent misinformation? To protect the school’s image? To enhance student learning? To provide accurate information to the school’s communities (including voters)? Which of the reasons given for review are educationally valid fitting within Hazelwood’s framework?
Questions students could ask those who support prior review
JEA suggests anyone faced with prior review ask administrators the following questions:
• How does prior review help students learn and advisers practice journalism?
• What is the purpose of the review? To prevent misinformation? To protect the school’s image? To enhance student learning? To provide accurate information to the school’s communities (including voters)? Which of the reasons given for review are educationally valid fitting within Hazelwood’s framework?
• What happens after review? Deletion of all or part of a story? If deletion, or telling students to remove copy or change it, how does this affect the truthful and accurate reporting a school’s community should expect from its media?
• Would this review be better carried out by students trained in journalism? What skills (and motives) do administrators bring to the review? How does review affect the school’s curriculum, especially student learning? Does review provide the lessons curriculum intends?
• How does administrator review of student work affect the school’s liability? Does administrative or faculty review, since the reviewers are agents of the state, reflect our democratic traditions and heritage? Does review change how community members perceive the truth?
• Isn’t there a better way? JEA understands not all advisers are permitted to practice without review and restraint. We understand it is often hard for teachers to fight it. We know the pressures that can be brought to bear on jobs. All we ask is advisers and teachers do the best they can to show the educational weakness and lack of logic in prior review.
• We know teachers sometimes have no choice, no alternative. It is up to JEA to try to create one.
More questions about prior review:
1. What other definitions of prior review might exist in the professional journalism and educational communities? In administrative communities?
2. What does Hazelwood really say about prior review? What is the basis of the court’s decision and what does it really mean? What have other courts said about the general concept of prior review and restraint?
3. What are valid educational reasons for prior review? Not reasons of personal comfortor generalizations about school safety? Learning and classroom reasoning. How do we answer the question “how can I prevent illegal content or unprotected speech from publication?”
4. If we can agree prior review has no legitimate educational value, what can we design that can take its place and still leave a feeling of protection for all the stakeholders in the educational process?
5. What can we create that will show this? Is there a history we can showcase to prove this point? How has this prior restraint improved the educational process or safety of schools where it exists? What provable educational studies/research/standards exist to show the effectiveness of prior review or restraint?
6. Why don’t these “learned societies” respect the educational value of prior review of restraint? Why do administrative or other school official groups condone the practice of prior review?
7. Can we show case studies where prior review does not exist and use these models to build a process of avoiding prior review?
8. Can we summarize these studies and build from the recommendations for a process to replace prior review?
9. What does a cross section of commercial media personnel have to say about prior review? What journalism and both the freedoms and responsibilities that go with it?
10. Why does the Journalism Education Association suggest its Adviser Code of Ethics might be a good initial replacement for prior review?
Why JEA condemns Prior Review
We believe prior review:
• Contradicts the school’s responsibility to teach and maintain, through example, the principles of democracy;
• Enables school administrators, who are government officials, to decide in advance what people will read or know. Such officials are potential newsmakers, and their involvement with the news-making process interferes with the public’s right to know;
• Creates the possibility of viewpoint discrimination, undermining the marketplace of ideas and all pretext of responsible journalism;
• Leads toward self-censorship, the most chilling and pervasive form of censorship. Such fear eliminates any chance of critical thinking, decision-making or respect for the opinions of others. • Stifles growth of students so they do not grow into thinking, discerning, effective contributing citizens in the democracy; • Impairs the ability of a school’s communities to discern the truth about the school and the accuracy of information citizens need to make accurate decisions and cast intelligent votes;
• Negates the educational value of a trained, professionally active adviser and teacher working with students in a counseling, educational environment. Prior review simply makes the teacher an accessory, as if what is taught really doesn’t matter
;Instead, we believe
• Rights, not authority and discipline, prepare students for roles in a democracy as thinking, discerning, contributing citizens;
• Student media best serves their communities only when editorially independent as they present truthful and accurate information;
• Student media are safe and peaceful places a for dissemination of ideas, and with ideas there is no clear right or wrong;
• Ultimate civic engagement and involvement only occur where students learn that they can practice constitutional guarantees;
• Responsible journalism occurs when a qualified faculty adviser, clear publications policies and professionally oriented journalism curriculum exist;
• Prior review interferes with the dynamic process of learning. Such review and censorship are the last resort of an educational system failing its present and future citizens
First and perhaps the most crucial question to ask: Prove prior review has legitimate pedagogical/educational value.
Read MoreUngagging your reporting is essential for transparency, accountability
by Stan Zoller, MJE
Want to get your news consumers to read a story? Give them a good, no great, lede. A good lede will not only get them to read a story, but may very well captivate them as well. But this piece isn’t about lede writing.
It’s from the Society of Professional Journalists’ update to its ongoing project, “Gagged
America” that meticulously details the issue of, as it says, “ Who’s allowed to talk to the press?
According to the First Amendment, in most cases the answer should be anyone. But the reality for many Americans, particularly those who are employed, is far more complicated.
The report, on the SPJ website, not only provides background, but also ways journalists can get involved. What the research team found: example of documents received from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and a sample FOIA requests.
It’s a superb collection of insights and tools. However, what makes it so valuable are not just the lessons and tools available, but the insights that journalists, including scholastic journalists should review and take into consideration when pursuing a story.
At issue, in general terms, are policies that limit employees and public officials from speaking to the media.
The report notes that “The silencing of employees is problematic for workers, journalists and the public for many reasons, and is especially troubling in the public sector, which is funded by taxpayers dollars and protected by the First Amendment.”
Call it gagging or restraint, the bottom line is that such policies block transparency by organizations and public bodies, such as city councils and school boards. Journalists should know an organization’s policies about speaking to the media and be prepared to work with them or, if need be, use tools such as the FOIA to get information.
How tricky can these policies be? According to the report, the “Palm Beach County, Florida, public schools states that principals can speak without permission and must merely “notify” the affairs office, but says nothing about other employees.”
Other school districts have policies that offer varying degrees of access to the media by employees. For example, researchers found that Escambia County, Florida’s public school system has nothing in its rulebook about news media communications. Savannah, Georgia’s public schools say media are “asked” to coordinate with public affairs on site visits but otherwise include no restrictive language.
So, what’s a reporter to do? As noted, make sure you understand a, in this case a school district’s policy. Look for potential loopholes.
For example, does the policy extend to school board members? Does the policy include full- and part-time teachers? Does it include no teaching personnel, like athletic coaches or co-curricular advisers? Know the breadth of a policy will enable you to look for additional sources and prepare questions that fit within the framework of guidelines. If you’re dealing with a policy like the one in place in the Savannah, Georgia schools, have an understanding of what coordination is with public affairs. There’s always a possibility they’ll want to review your questions ahead of time.
Avoid this if possible because there’s a strong likelihood you’ll get “canned answers” developed but the districts’PR Flaks. If you submit the answers by email, there’s a chance an email response that the public affairs folks may think will suffice.
If this happens, be transparent in your reporting and clearly note that an in-person interview was denied in favor of email response generated by the PR Flak or some other person or department. Be sure to name the individual and/or the department.
From the SPRC vaults
April Fools dilemma:
• Is what is pictured to be eaten or used to do work?
• Should news media publish confusing
or misleading content?
It’s that time of the year again. Potentially, a time for fools, wills and disasters instead of credibility. Issues raised often irk groups and individual alike. Others laugh and downplay the falsity. Created by the famous, everyday citizens and a few who want to be comedians, the spread of publishing such ideas and events challenge high school decorum between the Ides of March and July 4.
They commonly make news – for better or worse – as April Fools, Senior Wills and Senior Superlatives.
Their value often agitates some, incenses others. Others roll their eyes and sigh.
Sometimes reactions are more intense and spark highly charged reactions: prior review, prior restraint and more.
Before your student media choose to publish anything of similar style, student staffers should decide purpose, value and truth of what they are about to unleash.
Read MoreTomorrow’s Nellie Bly may be working on student media today
Two high school students, participants in the Dow Jones News Fund workshop at Kent State University in 2001, interview each other for the first story they had to write. Getting an early start as a journalist was a big plus in for many women journalists, including Katie Couric, who interned at the all-news Washington, D.C. radio station WAVA when she was in high school. (photo by Candace Bowen)
by Candace Bowen, MJE
If one of journalism’s jobs is to give voice to the voiceless, we should pay close attention to women in the field, especially in March, which is Women’s History Month.
This is a good time, according to the special website of the Library of Congress and other entities in Washington, D.C., to “commemorate and encourage the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women….”
What female journalists come to mind? Possibly historical figures like Nellie Bly, really named Elizabeth Jane Cochran, who broke the record of Jules Verne’s fictional character and went around the world in 72 (not 80) days. But she also wrote about issues no one spoke oft at the time: bad conditions for women in factories and abuse from male family members. Such subjects meant the Pittsburgh Dispatch, where she worked at the time, lost advertisers, so her editor let her only write about fashion and social events.
She left Pittsburgh and eventually became a reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. In the late 1880s, this meant she could cover more important – and sometimes sensational — issues. For instance, she went undercover in a mental institution, called the Women’s Lunatic Asylum, and spent 10 days there to report on the abuse and neglect. Copies of some of her stories and what else she covered are accessible through the Library of Congress link.
Read MoreSJW: Celebrate & rejuvenate
by John Bowen, MJE
Let the fireworks – figuratively or real – begin
For now is the time of JEA’s Student Journalism Week and all it can do to further democratic ideals.
For 100 years, JEA’s mission has been to support free and responsible scholastic journalism by providing resources and educational opportunities for students and advisers across the country. Although numerous things have changed since 1924, the goal remains.
On Meet the Press Feb. 18, host Kristen Welker showed a clip of Senator John McCain of Arizona talking about the absolute necessity of a free and, at times, aggressive press.
That point can be made about the importance of free and journalistically press in the nation’s schools. If students don’t see the working of free, student run student news media in schools, they won’t understand or practice journalism’s key roles.
As we can clearly see in events today, a society whose press, at any level, is not understood or trusted, often withers away into News Deserts, disinformation machines and stealthful liars, instead of centers of journalistic and social responsibility.
As we celebrate Scholastic Journalism Week and Scholastic Press Freedom Day, cheer and promote journalism as a life-changing education in democratic engagement. But also take time to look at issues and events that will require accurate, contextual and thorough reporting. And sometimes aggressive reporting.
Student journalists and communities can benefit from examining four key cornerstones that nurture, challenge and broaden journalism’s leadership for the future.
Scholastic Journalism as the Fourth Estate
Student Journalists can play the role of District and Community Watchdogs
by Tom McHale
New Jersey has launched multiple legislative initiatives designed to strengthen our democratic institutions. Consider the following bills signed into law in the last few years:
- Civics Education Expansion to Middle Schools (7/23/21): “By deepening civics instruction in middle school and high school, we are giving students the tools they need to be more engaged and informed citizens,” said Governor Murphy.
- New Voices of NJ (12/21/2021): The law protects the rights of student journalists in public high schools and colleges to editorial control of scholastic publications and protects advisers from retribution.
- Student Representatives on School Board (1/22) – Requires a non-voting student representative to be appointed to each district school board that includes grades 9-12.
- Information Literacy (1/4/23): Legislation directs the Department of Education to develop standards for Information and Media Literacy to address the “proliferation of disinformation that is eroding the role of truth in our political and civic discourse.”
- Civic Engagement (1/16/24): Allows students to take an excused absence from school to attend a civic event “sponsored by a government entity, a community-based organization, or a nonprofit” that includes” an element of “service learning and addresses a public issue or concern.”
These laws aim to address what is seen as a crisis in our democracy by attempting to develop students into informed, active citizens. While well-meaning, they operate independently from one another and often at the discretion of school administrators. A more effective approach would incorporate these initiatives into a system that requires students to practice citizenship and participate in democratic institutions.
The best way for students to learn to become active, ethical citizens is to play that role while in school with the guidance and encouragement of trained educators. Unfortunately, most public high schools don’t operate according to democratic principles and don’t promote student voice and choice. The small, private Free and Sudbury Schools provide an example public schools could learn from, but I don’t expect many to incorporate these structures any time soon. Nevertheless, showing this video to my students in a persuasive writing unit on school reform led to some interesting debates about personalized learning, student empowerment and responsibility.
Scholastic Journalists as District and Community Watchdogs
A robust and representative student government that brings the student body’s concerns to administrators and school board members can be an essential democratic learning tool. It’s important that the students feel their leaders are representing their concerns accurately and ethically. Information on how the student government operates and serves the student body is also essential. Scholastic journalism should work to keep its readers informed about its student government in the same way the local and national professional press does.
But if student journalists are to truly mimic the role of the professional press, they must go beyond informing readers about their student government. They need to do the difficult but necessary work of covering the power structures and decision-makers at the school and district levels.
Become Familiar with Power Structures and the Decision-Making Process
Scholastic publications can make a school’s power structures more apparent and the decision-making process more transparent. However, in my experience, even the school staff often needs to be made aware of this information. So, how can advisers support and encourage students to do this work?
Teach students how to find the information they need. How do they find district policies on scholastic publications, student behavior, and discipline? Are these policies online? Are they easy to find? Have students practice finding policies on issues that matter to them and their audience.
What is the school and district hierarchy? Who does each administrator answer to? What areas are they responsible for? Create a giant flow chart to illustrate this that students have access to. This will help them identify the best person to interview for any issue, policy change, or decision. Then, invite as many of these people as possible to talk to the staff to discuss their jobs and how they make decisions.
Teach students how to read school board minutes and agendas. The business of school boards can be confusing, especially for teens. I suggest having someone who serves on the board come in and talk about the process, the board committees, the difference between agendas and minutes, how they are created, and what items on the agenda mean. Then, help students practice developing questions based on agenda items and minutes.
Have students attend or watch school board meetings. Require that students attend a board meeting and take notes on what they think would be newsworthy for their readers, along with questions they have. In many districts, board meetings are broadcast on TV and YouTube. Some are even recorded. Using video can make it easier to assign students sections of the meeting to focus
Reach out to organizations that play a significant role in a district. Teachers unions, principal and supervisor associations, and school board associations may agree to help educate students about what they do and how the system works. While working on New Voices legislation in New Jersey, I realized the power these organizations can wield and how their competing interests can sometimes interact. Allowing students a glimpse into this may help them deepen their understanding of the issues and politics involved in their district.
Student journalists need to attend the meetings where decisions that affect their readers are made.
They need to research, prepare, and be allowed to ask questions of those making these decisions. Once they better understand the structures and processes in a school district, they will be better equipped to report on issues that matter to their audience.
Hyperlocal = Unique and Relevant
I liked to remind my students that, like every other publication, they compete for an audience: Why would someone go to your publication to read about gun control when they can get the same content from a more credible source online? What are you offering that is unique?
While students can certainly offer a teenage perspective on national issues, they better serve their audience by covering local events and issues. They are better equipped to report on this than anyone else due to their experiences and access to school or local sources.
I recently talked to Katy Temple about this. She currently works as an aide to Governor Murphy in the Office of Appointments. Temple is a Columbia University graduate, a former Student Press Law Center Intern, and a former editor-in-chief of The Torch, Bergen County Community College’s newspaper. During her tenure at The Torch, Katy began to see the importance of focusing more coverage on school and the decision-making that impacted readers.
Student journalists often want to cover the stories they see in the national press.
“You know, you want to cover the big flashy stories,” Temple said. “You want to cover the midterm elections, and you want to cover gun violence and all of these things because that’s what you see in the bigger press outlets. But those aren’t the things that are most relevant or even the most important to our readership.”
Temple’s advisers, Will Wheaton and Sue Toth, encouraged a shift in the newspaper’s coverage.
“And so I think shifting that focus was something that I first had to be made aware of, and then once I knew that that shift in content had to be made, then we were able to go and do it,” Temple said. “So I think it starts with advisers and making sure that advisers are also encouraging [student journalists] to do this.”
Temple realized this when she took on the role of editor-in-chief of The Torch.
“I kind of came in like a tornado on it, in all honesty,” she said. “I wanted to make big changes. I wanted to get us back entering awards and winning things and doing things like that to kind of put us back on the map. But I think that that was more possible when I had an adviser who was also willing to make these radical changes, whether it be in coverage in editing, layout, whatever it may be.”
Filling in the Gaps in Local News Coverage
Scholastic journalism is uniquely positioned to provide this opportunity for students. The more closely scholastic journalism mimics professional journalism’s role in our democratic society, the more students will benefit. In many communities, this means filling in to cover the school or local events and meetings that news outlets used to cover. In the process, student journalists can learn the vital watchdog role that news organizations must play in our society – despite the criticism and ridicule they sometimes face.
Temple did a session on Student Journalism and Democracy at the Garden State Scholastic Press Association’s Fall Conference. She left the students and advisers with a final message to think about.
“We’ve all heard that democracy dies in darkness, but democracy actually dies without you being the student [journalists]. If we don’t have you filling in these gaps and doing the work that professional outlets used to do, then we don’t have a fully functioning democracy, or our democracy isn’t working the way that it should be,” she told students.
“For advisers, I think it is to believe in the students the way that they should believe in themselves,” Temple said. “We often hear that students are young and they don’t know what they’re doing or their brains aren’t fully developed, right? But these students are going to go into the world that we have kind of created for them. And so not only should they be aware of what’s going on now before they get to fully participate in it, but with the proper encouragement and support. They have the capabilities to do really good work and do the job of professional outlet, but you really have to foster that confidence and that belief system in them from the beginning.”
For more on how students are serving as local reporters serving communities in news deserts, see Candace Bowen’s series of posts.
And don’t forget to check out the activities posted for Scholastic Journalism Week (2/19-2/23).