Work with students as they select
the proper platform for content QT58
Guideline:
Students should evaluate the best tool for the content it provides. Because of this, students should use processes for brainstorming and shaping the coverage that identifies how to best show the story.
Student media should consistently and purposefully brainstorm what story ideas might be relevant and valuable to their audience.
Students should not ignore those story ideas that might be sensitive or cause offense but instead should consider how to cover these issues in meaningful, sensitive ways.
Student media should also recognize while audiences are likely to seek out news that’s personally interesting to them, news media have an obligation to also provide those stories that meet a standard for public service.
Often, these stories will fall in the “watchdog” category and include political and institutional coverage. While the audience may not be intrinsically interested in these stories, journalists must use their best news judgment to provide a mix of what consumers want to know and need to know.
Stance:
Students should brainstorm the best platform for their content. Audiences also may vary based on the platform.
Reasoning/suggestions:
If students don’t use the best venue for the content, then the story may not be told as robustly as possible. They also need to understand, as suppliers and consumers of news, that digital platforms are not reliant on editors to help select content. According to The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley Reengineered Journalism by Emily Bell and Taylor Owen, “Platforms rely on algorithms to sort and target content. They have not wanted to invest in human editing, to avoid both cost and the perception that humans would be biased. However, the nuances of journalism require editorial judgment, so platforms will need to reconsider their approach.”
Because of this, students need to understand the ways social media caters to the individual.
Additionally, as media literate consumers as Bell and Owen write, students
should understand, “greater transparency and accountability are required from platform companies. While news might reach more people than ever before, for the first time, the audience has no way of knowing how or why it reaches them, how data collected about them is used, or how their online behavior is being manipulated. And publishers are producing more content than ever, without knowing who it is reaching or how—they are at the mercy of the algorithm.”
In essence, consumers often unknowingly shape the news they receive.
Resources:
Journalism Needs the Right Skills to Survive, Poynter
The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley Reengineered Journalism, Columbia Journalism Review
Read MoreLimiting student emails QT57
Guideline and policy
The school can’t keep students from using email addresses they create for communications related to their student media.
Nothing in Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) or Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) overcomes the First Amendment protections students have nor the rights they have under state law.
Key points/action: Talk to the Student Press Law Center for guidance on how to respond to this.
Stance: Three points to note:
- The school is not required by CIPA or COPPA to prevent the use of these publication email address that don’t go through the official school Google email service. So long as the school can attest it’s taking appropriate measures to protect students from harm that could result via these emails (training them how to use them and how to respond to inappropriate messages, making a faculty member like the adviser accessible to the students if they have questions or problems, etc.), they will have complied with any legal obligations under those laws.
- There is no reason the school couldn’t give students on the publication staff a second email address connected to their publication role that operates under the same protocols as the students’ official school email address. This may not be a good option because of the access the school could have to publication-related messages, but it would be a way to satisfy the school’s concerns and get separate emails working more easily.
- Gmail is not the only option for free email accounts for your publication staff. If your students could work around this by creating new email addresses via another service that can be accessed from the school computers, that might be worth considering.
Reasoning/suggestions: The more challenging issue is whether the school can prevent students from accessing those email accounts on school-owned devices. Again, the SPLC is probably best able to advise you and your students,
Resource: Mark Goodman, Knight chair in Scholastic Journalism, Kent State University, September 2017.
Related: These points and other decisions about mission statement, forum status and editorial policy should be part of a Foundations Package that protects journalistically responsible student expression.
Read MoreHow should student media
handle academic dishonesty? QT56
Dishonesty compromises the integrity and credibility of the student publication. The editorial board and/or adviser should address any instance of academic misconduct immediately.
Student editors should develop a clear process for handling academic dishonesty. Both media staff and school policies may dictate consequences for academic dishonesty. In addition to school consequences, other approaches could include removal or suspension from the media staff and publishing an apology.
Guidelines
Students should be honest in all stages of their work. Dishonesty is a serious offense and should not be tolerated. Dishonesty compromises the integrity and credibility of the student publication. The editorial board and/or adviser should address any instance of academic misconduct immediately.
Stance
Student editors should develop a clear process for handling academic dishonesty. Both media staff and school policies may dictate consequences for academic dishonesty. In addition to school consequences, other approaches could include removal or suspension from the media staff and publishing an apology.
Suggestions
In journalism, academic dishonesty is not limited to cheating and plagiarism. Issues especially relevant to student media include:
- Fabrication — inventing quotes or other content
- Non-contextual content — taking quotes, facts or other content out of their intended context in a way that misleads the audience
- Manipulation of photos, video and text — editing or altering content in a way to change its meaning or misrepresent reality
- Inadequate verification — failing to assure the veracity of information, quotes or facts for your story.
Resources
The Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity, The Center for Academic Integrity
Journalism Department Code of Ethics and Conduct, San Francisco State University
The Medill Justice Project Ethics Book, Northwestern University
Our cheating culture: Plagiarism and fabrication are unacceptable in journalism, The Buttry Diary
Audio: Plagiarism, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee, Press Rights Minute
National Press Photographers Code of Ethics Audio: Creative Commons Licensing, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee, Press Rights Minute
Read More
Accepting ads from competing organizations QT55
Students who sell ads sometimes hesitate to solicit advertising from competing companies. They sometimes have a loyalty to one of their clients or they believe their clients will be frustrated if their competitor is also advertising in the same publication.
This is a good problem to have. Too many advertisers want to support your publication, and you should encourage a forum for advertising that is as robust as your editorial content. Sure, consider guidelines in terms of where ads from competing companies will be placed, but outside of that, create a guideline indicating that each of your advertisers will receive equal and fair treatment and have the same options for size and placement in your paper.
This is a standard practice in the commercial media industry. Competing stores, companies, politicians and organizations show up in the same newspaper, the same commercial block or in the same websites.
Guideline:
The publication will solicit and accept ads from competing organizations and offer the same pricing and placement options to all organizations.
Social media post/question: What to do when two competing organizations want to advertise in your publication?
Stance: Just because an advertiser (even a long-term one) is in your publication does not mean other companies or organizations shouldn’t also have access to your community.
Reasoning/suggestions: Frequently, two competing organizations will want to advertise in your publication. What do you do when you have two pizza franchises, two driving schools, two gas stations or Planned Parenthood and a right-to-life organization that want to advertise?
The best newspapers serve their community with an open exchange of ideas and information, and they should treat advertising the same way. Professional publications have always accepted ads from competing companies (department stores, grocery stores, car dealerships, and etc.) and your product should be no different.
Resources:
Student Media Guide to Advertising Law, SPLC
Read More
Ad Placement QT53
Newspapers used to keep in-depth, front page and opinion pages completely separated from advertising.
The thinking was the advertising and promotion of products should not appear to influence a newspaper’s editorial choices. They wanted to keep their most important pages dedicated to the content they deemed most important.
These self-imposed guidelines have relaxed significantly in recent years. Newspapers include ads on front pages and on in-depth pages, often in prominent places on the outside edges.
Most newspapers do still keep the editorial pages free of advertising in order to keep their editorial content free from explicit or inferred influence.
When students secure advertising for the newspaper, editors must decide where that content will go. In order to maintain the integrity of the most important aspects of your newspaper.
They need to make sure their advertising is placed away from editorial pages and in-depth content, but consider carefully what compromises they might make on the front page.
If there is page page advertising, what premium price should get from advertiser(s).
Guideline:
Ads will touch student produced content on the inside pages of the publication with no ads on the editorial or in-depth pages.
Organizations directly competing with each other will be placed on different pages, when possible. Special pricing will be available for ads that run in color on the back page.
Question: Where do we put all of these ads we’re getting?
Stance: Advertising must not show up on editorial pages, in-depth pages or the front page.
Reasoning/suggestions: When students secure advertising for the newspaper, editors must decide where that content will go. In order to maintain the integrity of the most important aspects of the news medium. Ensure advertising is placed away from editorial pages, in-depth content and your front page.
If students opt to run ads on the front page, the ad shouldn’t overwhelm the content or appear to be actual news content. This is a longstanding principle with most publications and is meant to avoid the potential for conflicts of interest.
Advertising must be clearly recognizable and differentiated from the most import and highest profile content.
Resources:
Student media guide to advertising law, SPLC
Read More
Handling sponsored content, native ads QT52
Although it is quite possible scholastic media will never face making a decision to run material known as sponsored content or native ads, students and advisers should prepare guidelines just in case.
Sponsored content and native advertising, two media terms for paid materials, are becoming a fact of life for media and consumers. That said, student media, when faced with publishing them, should act carefully and with the best interests of the audience/consumer first.
Scholastic media owe it to their audiences to expect clearly sourced and non-slanted information, particularly with so much concern with fake news.
Guideline
In the last several years, commercial media have faced a new kind of paid content — “native advertising” or “sponsored content.” The goal with this content is to provide advertising in a way that mimics the look and style of news/editorial content instead of appearing as traditional advertising. This style of advertising has raised serious ethical issues and discussion.
Given the influx of this type of advertising and its spread into scholastic media, students should remember their obligation to keep their communities aware of what kind of content they are publishing.
Communities need to know the type content they are exposed to so they can make informed and rational decisions.
Question: Should your student media accept sponsored content?
Key points/action: Sponsored content and native advertising, two media terms for paid materials, are becoming a fact of life for media and consumers. That said, student media, when faced with publishing them, should act carefully and with the best interests of the audience/consumer first.
Since it is financed ads or reporting, it can be fake news or at least deceptive information, and approached carefully.
Stance: We believe sponsored content can be accepted and published while still protecting the integrity and credibility of student media.
Reasoning/suggestions: Students must create clear guidelines for publishing sponsored content. Recommendation for inclusion in those guidelines should include:
- Prominent and clear identification of the piece as sponsored content.
- A clear statement, at least on the op-ed pages or their equivalent, of why your student media publish sponsored content and who paid for the piece or benefits from its publication.
- Verification, as much as is possible, of the credibility and factualness of information and sources in the piece.
- A concise statement, at least on the op-ed pages or their equivalent, that what your editorial board’s support of included material is Ex: this content does not necessarily represent the view of your media or school system).Resources:
Making Memories, One Lie at a Time (example of native ad), Slate Web magazine
New York Times Tones Down Labeling on Its Sponsored Posts, Advertising Age
Native Advertising Examples: 5 or the Best (and Worst), WordStream Online Advertising
The Native Advertising Playbook, Interactive Advertising Bureau
Audio: Sponsored Content, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee, Press Rights Minute
PR Giant Edelman Calls for Ethics in Sponsored Content, Forbes
FTC: Publishers Will Be Held Responsible for Misleading native Ads, Adexchanger.com
Related: These points and other decisions about mission statement, forum status and editorial policy should be part of a Foundations Package that protects journalistically responsible student expression.
Read More