Hazelwood is what advisers make of it,
only as strong as you allow it to be
by Ben Harwood
Hazelwood stories: Ultimately, it’s up to advisers to dictate Hazelwood’s lasting impact.
Hazelwood’s defining legacy can be one of obstruction, censorship and frustration – an all-encompassing “disruption-to-the-educational-process” shield wielded by administrators fearful of litigation.
Or it can be used as a vehicle to build better student journalists – making them more skeptical, deliberate, detail-oriented and ever in search of more expert sources.
I’ve chosen the latter.
With the exception of obscenity, unprotected speech and stories that will place a source or reporter in danger, Hazelwood shouldn’t influence an adviser’s decision to green light a reporter’s story.
Want to cover X or do a feature about Y? Awesome — go for it.
When the topic is controversial, the journalist’s goal should be to objectively investigate and accurately report a story in a manner so compelling and so strongly sourced, the publication has no choice but to share it with the community.
I’m not suggesting a wild, throw-caution-to-the-wind approach.
Instead, embrace the many teachable moments that come with proactively diffusing potential obstacles.
Encourage your editors and reporters to consult an outside legal expert before going to print. The Student Press Law Center is an amazing resource. My staff runs two or three stories a year past them (which reminds me, I should probably send over a gift). Develop relationships with law school professors. Build partnerships with professional journalists nearby.
In short, make it easier for your administrator to believe in your students, your program and – most importantly — you.
These steps build credibility and give your students’ newsroom an air of professionalism.
I’ve been fortunate to build and maintain the support of administrators and the community. I’ve never been threatened with censorship or prior review. Along with my editors, I helped craft the district’s publications policy.
But I’ve worked hard to develop my program’s credibility and in this community, nobody demands more or has higher expectations than I do.
There’s a phrase I often repeat to my students: “You will be taken as seriously as you take yourself.”
The grammar is brutal, but the point is simple – preparation, combined with the right amount of well-placed confidence, can go a long way.
Student journalists provide an important community service and are capable of exceptional work. No court decision will ever change that.
Hazelwood is only as strong as you allow it to be.
Ben Harwood is newspaper adviser and FLEX teacher at Seaholm High School in Birmingham, Michigan.
Tweet8: Our job is to fight censorship
Understand how and why prior review limits your expression and endangers the school and administrators. #25HZLWD
http://jeasprc.org/tweet8-our-job-is-to-fight-censors
Prior review is not only damaging to the professional practice of journalism, but it also creates a stifling, restricted community. When student voices are marginalized, the educational process suffers, and foundational democratic principles such as truth and transparency are undermined.
Often, it is administrators or school district officials who exercise prior review. However, sometimes advisers take on the ultimate role of editor, thinking this is best for the students, publication, and the school. Not only is this educationally invalid thinking, it creates potential legal issues for the adviser and the school community.
Read more about prior review below to find out why students should have final editorial control, and why advisers and administrators are modeling best practices when they don’t have the final say.
Resources:
• Read JEA’s official statement on prior review
http://jea.org/home/about-jea/statements/
• Find advice to help your administrators understand the damaging effects of prior review
http://www.jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Foundationadminadvice.pdf
• Analzying prior review
http://www.jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Fightingpriorreview.pdf
• Key questions to ask of those who engage in prior review
http://jeasprc.org/questions-for-those-who-prior-review/
• Guidelines if facing prior review
http://jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/2012-Guidelines-if-facing-review.pdf
• Prior review questions
http://jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/2012-PriorreviewQ.pdf
• As journalism teachers, our job is to fight censorship
http://jeasprc.org/sjw11-as-journalism-teachers-our-job-is-to-fight-censorship/
Read More
Hazelwood leaves too much room
for limitation of student voices
by Ellen Austin
Hazelwood stories: I began my journalism advising career in Minnesota, a Hazelwood state. Teaching at a small public school, the shadow of Hazelwood was a reality. My principal wanted to read the paper in advance, and tried to use Hazelwood as a justification for that request. I was lucky that I had some great mentors to call at NSPA in Minneapolis and at other successful newspapers in the area who coached me.
It took several conversations to bring my principal to a place where “reviewing” the paper became, “Please get me a copy before everyone else reads it, so I know what’s happening if the phone’s start ringing.”
I was lucky: I had a reasonable principal whose major concern was doing his job well for the school at large. He was not a martinet, and he was comfortable with the idea that students were learning firsthand the tools of democracy through their work on their school paper.
Not every student article shines as a sample of great writing and bias-free prose. Not every student article remains fair to the community about which it is written. But not allowing students to practice their right to free speech and freedom of the press in our nation’s schools is akin to never letting a driver practice driving a car before handing her keys and turning her loose on an interstate at the age of 18.
A ruling like Hazelwood, with its ambiguities and wide latitude of interpretation, leaves too much room for an administrator to create a vise-like grip on the voices of students.
Democracy, like driving, requires practice and a safe place for that practice.
Hazelwood ages, but the online world continues to morph and expand, The restrictive powers granted to school officials through Hazelwood can allow the squelching of trained, guided, and curricular work in journalism in a school setting.
But, by disabling the campus option for debate and discussion, by removing a trained teacher who can provide ethics training and consistency in writing instruction, and by preventing an adult sounding board for the discussion of issues being discussed, students can easily choose to circumvent school papers and websites completely, and instead go online through any number of sites that live outside the purview of the school’s reach — and outside the rules of good journalistic practices.
The sorrow I have about Hazelwood’s chilling effect goes beyond the students, however; I’ve watched dozens of passionate, skilled, well-trained adviser colleagues forced out of their classrooms by fearful or angry administrators in retaliation for work — usually, the ideas of the work — published in a school newspaper. Another longtime adviser in a nearby state resigned just last week, posting a farewell note to our national online group about her fatigue in trying to do a good job in the face of constant restriction.
This country’s foundations were laid with fractious debates and intense discussions. “Being nice and avoiding controversy” is not language found in our constitutional amendments. What does abide in our Constitution’s language is the emphasis on informed, civil debate and on a citizenry that not only has rights but the freedom to exercise those rights.
Ellen Austin is the 2012 Dow Jones News Fund Journalism Teacher of the Year.
Read More
Tweet 7: Know copyright guidelines to avoid issues
Use original work–don’t ‘borrow.’ Copyright violation is a quick way to unhealthy student media. #25HZLWD http://jeasprc.org/tweet-7-know-copyright-guidelines-to-avoid-issues/
Student publications are legally and ethically required to follow the same copyright laws as professional newspapers and websites. That generally means that unless you have permission to use someone else’s work (yes, even if you found it on the Internet), you shouldn’t use it.
Some exceptions, like “fair use,” mean you can use another person’s image or work in limited circumstances.
Learn more about copyright and fair use from the Student Press Law Center resources listed below:
• Who owns the copyright? It depends.
http://www.jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/sprc-owncopyrtpkg10.pdf
• Principals, advisers and students face misconceptions about who owns student
work
http://www.splc.org/news/report_detail.asp?id=1584&edition=54
• Copyright
and
fair
use
http://ww.splc.org/presentations/kyr‐copyright.pdf
• Back
to
school
checklist:
who
owns
what?
http://www.splc.org/wordpress/?cat=13
• Guide
to
copyright
law
http://www.splc.org/knowyourrights/legalresearch.asp?id=32
• Copyright
law
PowerPoint
www.splc.org/presentations/ppcopyrightlaw.pps
• copyright
Hazelwood’s costs: Open forum status helps win court case,
then stripped, not returned
By Kevin Smyth
Hazelwood stories: When I joined JagWire in September 2007 as a 51-year old adviser with no advising background, and limited experience as a student journalist, I had no idea I’d become a poster boy for “things that can go wrong your first year as adviser.” It’s been a difficult story, one that’s not finished, but I have hope better days are ahead.
In 2007, JagWire was an award-winning newsmagazine, attracting knowledgeable, talented writers. They took on some important edgy topics including pornography and student gambling. Considered an open forum for student expression under the rules enumerated in the Hazelwood decision, JagWire was entirely directed by students, which occasionally resulted in disagreements with Principal Brian Lowney. But it also paid off with state and national awards.
When I took over in 2007 I had a staff that was large, experienced, and led by a student editorial board that was enthusiastic and knew a lot more about running the paper than I did. In January 2008 JagWire proceeded with plans for an issue on oral sex. It was a serious focus topic with articles on student attitudes, student health, and district health education related to this topic.
It also included student interviews that detailed their experiences, and, with their permission, named names. Needless to say, JagWire 8.5 provoked considerable controversy. It won a best of show award from the Washington Journalism Education Association for 2008.
It won two additional prizes, though much less desirable. In the spring of 2008 the Puyallup School District was sued for invasion of privacy, negligence, and intentional infliction of harm relating to the publication of student names. The following September the school district informed us we lost our open forum status. JagWire and the other high school newspapers in our district would be subject to prior review and prior restraint.
Since the fall of 2008, JagWire struggled with the loss of our forum status and the independence it insured. Some of the problems were logistical. How could we meet our deadlines while insuring Mr. Lowney approved our work? Others were far more substantial.
During the 2009-10 school year it was as if the paper was reviewed by the lawyers representing the district. Our case was headed for trial in the spring, and JagWire was enveloped in an aura of tension and anxiety. Our issue on censorship in the fall was confiscated with a resulting loss of ad revenue.
Some of my students’ best work ever was penciled out for fear it was too controversial. Meetings with an increasingly uncomfortable principal ended in tears and frustration. Protests and appeals resulted in phone calls to lawyers. This was not the way to run a newspaper.
In the years that followed, it was as though JagWire lost its heart. Each year the paper produced some fine student journalists. We did eight issues per year. We traveled to state and national conventions.
My kids produced fine work and we won our fair share of prizes in write off competitions. Though I continued to promote the view JagWire was their forum and I promised to support them any way I could, the paper lost its edge. Students questioned taking on controversial or cutting edge issues when their work could simply be eliminated.
When Mr. Lowney, never an enthusiastic enforcer, lamented that he missed the edginess of the old days, I responded morosely, “They’ve been trained.”
In the spring of 2010 the JagWire case went to trial.
In a 10-2 verdict the jury found in favor of our paper and my students. One of the chief defenses used by our legal team was that our paper was run as an open forum, with students accepting the responsibility for what they wrote. The court determined JagWire was a limited public forum.
When the case was appealed to Washington Court of Appeals Division II, the appellate justices affirmed this finding. Plaintiffs’ counsel, contending that the “open forum” is a unicorn, a kind of myth that does not protect student press rights filed its petition with the Washington State Supreme Court in September 2012 to overturn the unanimous appellate ruling. (Ed. note: The Washington State Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal)
In the fall of 2012 I am encouraged by my delightful staff and talented editor- in-chief. There are rumors afoot there is interest in several controversial topics relevant to school climate here at Emerald Ridge High School.
We have a new district superintendent. There is discussion of taking the paper online beginning with a blog. Despite the district’s legal success and a new leader, it isn’t clear the restoration of our forum status is on the horizon.
Read More
Tweet6: Blueprint provides outline for passing free-expression laws
It’s obvious, by the frequent reports of administrative prior review and restraint across the country, that there is a lack of clarity about the law and the First Amendment rights of students.
The waters, muddied by the 1988 Hazelwood Supreme Court decision, are much more clear now in eight states where anti-Hazelwood legislation has passed: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Oregon and North Dakota.
For the student press in all other states, there is a constant tug of war between student journalists and their administrators over what is allowed: Under what circumstances is administrative control over content justified? What recourse do students have when their rights have been infringed upon? What is the role of the adviser? Who is liable when unprotected speech slips through and is published?
It has become clear that, in the states where legislation has passed, these questions now have answers; in the states where there is no clarifying law, the answers to these questions are ill defined. There are no winners in the resulting tug-of-war between school administrators, their districts, and the student press.
in March 2012, a team of SPRC Commission members poured over archives documenting successes and failures in passing legislation, and created a downloadable “Promoting Scholastic Press Rights Legislation: A Blueprint for Success.” This document was updated in February 2016.
This guide is not a guarantee of success, but the SPRC hopes that it will offer insights into the challenges, and will be a practical reference for those who choose to navigate the unpredictable waters of the legislative process. The information will also be available on our homepage, in the menu section, on the right.
To help provide background information about the Hazelwood decision, download this legal research by the First Amendment Center:
http://www.firstamendmentschools.org/resources/handout1a.aspx?id=13970
Additional resources:
- Information about states that have passed state legislation OK
http://www.splc.org/knowyourrights/statelegislation.asp
- Model Policies, Legislation and Regulation
http://www.splc.org/page/model
- California Leonard Law
http://www.splc.org/knowyourrights/law_library.asp?id=13
- Press freedom at a public junior and senior high school
http://www.splc.org/knowyourrights/legalresearch.asp?subcat=1
- About our legal system
http://www.splc.org/knowyourrights/legalresearch.asp?id=1
- Cure Hazelwood
http://www.splc.org/section/cure-hazelwood
Read More