Constitution Day is right time
to apply for FAPFA recognition
by Lori Keekley, MJE
As advisers, we work to support student journalists on a daily basis.
Taking a moment today to apply for the First Amendment Press Freedom Award is a great way to symbolically show this support.
Read MoreStart the year strong while
promoting students’ press rights
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.
Read MoreAsking questions never goes out of style
by Stan Zoller, MJE
A Chicago TV station has the call letters WMAQ. Its origins go back to the 1922 when The Chicago Daily News started the station. Its call letters were known to mean “We Must Ask Questions,” which today would not only be known as solid journalism, but also fact checking.
The Daily News sold the station to NBC in 1931, but the legacy of the call letters continues. Whether it was the intention of William Quinn, publisher of The Chicago Daily News when it started WMAQ to promote good journalism or people just assigned those words to WMAQ, one thing remains constant — asking questions remains a vital part of journalism today.
When journalists – whether students or professional — have even the faintest inkling about something, they need to ask questions. This is true when covering a speech, doing an interview, attending a press conference or a school board meeting.
Read MoreFor your next editorial,
stand up for journalism
A graphic like the Boston Globe used with a collection of newspaper editorials from across the country is simple, clean and very attention-grabbing.
by Candace Bowen, MJE
It’s not too late.
Even if you weren’t back in school by mid-August or hadn’t started publishing yet, it’s not too late to follow the Boston Globe’s campaign to get publications everywhere to write editorials arguing against President Trump’s frequent assertion that journalists are the “enemy of the people.”
“We propose to publish an editorial on Aug. 16 on the dangers of the administration’s assault on the press and ask others to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date,” The Globe announced. And more than 300 professional news outlets and organizations followed suit.
Read MoreTime for informed civic engagement
2018 is the season of the which
by John Bowen, MJE
Student journalists must learn to face key questions this fall, not only in terms of scholastic media but also in terms of informed civic engagement:
For example, which information inundating them deserves their belief and active support and which deserves their active skepticism:
• Which version of the truth about collusion in the issues surrounding election meddling?
• Which vision of what America stands for will prevail in the 2018 midterm elections?
• Which political, social, scientific, medical, cultural and educational positions most accurately present reality?
• Which skills will students develop so they cannot only tell the difference between information, misinformation and disinformation but act successfully on those differences?
Responding and acting on these questions – and others below – are among the SPRC’s mission this year.
In other words, when students question authority, as citizens or journalists, they must also question what authority said, authorities’ credibility and reliability and what authority has to gain.
Some call this skeptical knowing or learning. Not cynicism. Not the attack dog theory of media.
The watchdog.
Read MoreWays to celebrate Constitution Day 2018
The Scholastic Press Rights Committee is again excited to provide lesson plans and activities to help you celebrate Constitution Day and the First Amendment. Constitution Day recognized Sept. 17 each year, and we have a trove of new and archived lessons and activities to help you raise awareness of the First Amendment’s rights and applications for students.
Take a look at the new lessons:
Read More