Impressed by the FAPFA winners? Show everyone your forum status, too
Impressed by the First Amendment Press Freedom Award schools? We are.
We would bet, though, there are more student media out there that would qualify as forums. So, between now and next fall when the next FAPFA deadline comes around, let others know of your forum status by applying to be recognized this Scholastic Journalism Week.
Go to the Center for Scholastic Journalism website and learn more about that recognition, and then submit the online form to apply.
Establishing your student media as open forums for student expression – not closed or limited forums – can make a huge difference in developing a Hazelwood Cure. The best forum is like preventative medicine. The worst is like being exposed to active disease cultures. The information and resources below can help you on the road to wellness.
CSJ recently added these schools as open forums, and their locations will be pinned on CSJ’s Google map:
•Lafayette High School, Wildwood, MO.
• Eureka High School, Eureka, MO.
• South Hadley High School, South Hadley, MA.
Links to map resources:
• List of designated open forums,
• CSJ Forum PowerPoint in case you have further questions about your forum status
Need another eight reasons to work toward designated public forum status/?
Daniel Reimold wrote 8 ways a landmark Supreme Court ruling has changed student journalism on the Poynter website Feb. 21. His main source, SPLC executive director Frank LoMonte, called the Hazelwood decision’s input of scholastic journalism “sheer devastation.”
If nothing else might convince those public forum schools out there to become recognized for their achievements this article and its key points, might.
Reimold ended the article with this quote from LoMonte: I’t disheartening to see anyone censored,” said LoMonte, “but it’s doubly disheartening when people are so frightened and intimidated that they won’t even speak up about it. You’re never going to change public policy until the decision makers perceive there is a widespread problem.”
Read MoreFour Missouri Schools Earn Press Freedom Award
Perhaps it is fitting these four schools are this year’s recipients of the First Amendment Press Freedom Award.
After all, it is the 25th anniversary of the Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier decision, and Hazelwood East, it can be argued, sits in their backyards. In Missouri.
Even without a state law to support them, four St. Louis-area schools showed they actively support and protect First Amendment rights of their students and teachers as they earned the FAPFA recognition.
The 1988 U.S. Supreme Court’s Hazelwood decision gave administrators the right to censor student media and more, under certain conditions.
Francis Howell High School and Francis Howell North High School, St. Charles, Mo., Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Mo., and Lafayette High School, Wildwood, Mo., will be recognized at the opening keynote at the JEA/NSPA High School Journalism Convention in San Francisco April 25.
This award has been co-sponsored for 13 years by the Journalism Education Association, National Scholastic Press Association and the Quill and Scroll Society.
The award, which began with an emphasis on student publications, was originally titled Let Freedom Ring, and later expanded to include the other freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.
As in previous years, schools competed for the title by first answering questionnaires submitted by an adviser and at least one editor; those who advanced to the next level were asked to provide responses from the principal and all publications advisers and student editors, indicating their support of the five freedoms. In addition, semifinalists submitted samples of their printed editorial policies.
First round applications are due annually by Dec. 1. Downloadable applications for 2014 will be available on the JEA website in the fall.
Way to show everyone the road to the First Amendment, Missouri.
Read MoreCelebrate Scholastic Journalism Week
with lesson plan gifts for others
by Candace Bowen
It’s time to celebrate! Feb. 17-23 is Scholastic Journalism Week. Did your staff make 45 cookies, each with one word from the First Amendment on it? Wear staff t-shirts? Sign the TAO pledge?
That’s great, but celebrations also need gifts and how about some for your colleagues, the other teachers down the hall? It’s likely some of them could use a great last-minute lesson plan, so how about letting THEM see how well journalism skills apply to their content areas, not just in your classroom? The links below are a good start.
• Some think math and journalists don’t mix, but unfortunately, they must because stories have numbers — everything from budgets to school levies to percentages on standardized tests. EditTeach.org, edited by Dr. Deborah Gump, is full of useful goodies, but one of its teaching resources is “Math for journalists – and readers.” Included are math story dilemmas (READ: story problems) journalists – and their readers – face frequently. Yes, the answers are there, too – and so are two PowerPoints.
• HSJ.org is THE site for lesson plans for you, but it includes plenty to share with others in your building. One is perfect as a gift for a history teacher. JEA Illinois State Director Stan Zoller, who attended the ASNE Institute at Hampton University in 2003, created “Watergate: The Coverage and the Aftermath.”
• Concordia University’s HotChalk offers a range of lesson plans tied to rather generic but probably useful standards. For instance, for social studies teachers “Do Something about…Teen voting/civic engagement” gives examples of using writing to spur others to action. Activities include role playing as muckrakers and creating blogs while seeing what impact those can have on civic engagement in the real world.
• The New York Times and Learning Network is just full of lesson plans, all formatted and complete with accompanying materials.
• How about sharing a lesson plan on the history of Valentine’s Day with materials from articles in that publication.
• The economics teacher might like “Here Comes the . . . Bill,” a lesson plan on the cost of milestone events.
• Do teachers in theater classes have students study reviews? Offer them a lesson plan from the New York Times that discusses the pros and cons of using movie reviews to choose what to see.
Use Scholastic Journalism Week to build some good will with these gifts for your fellow teachers. And my gift to you? Some sites you may not have known about, full of additional lesson plans for you!
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Tweet 26: Now it’s your turn. What is the Hazelwood Cure?
After 25 days of Hazelwood, what would you like to see jlsm organizations address? How are YOU able to help? #25HZLWD http://jeasprc.org/tweet-26-now-its-your-turn-what-is-the-hazelwood-cure
What are your thoughts and experiences. What would you like to see journalism organizations address and why. What are you willing to commit to? It will take all of us.
We would love to hear your thoughts and comments about what you would like to see for the future of scholastic journalism and its media.
Please carry the discussion forward using the comment section below.
Read MoreTweet25- Paying the cost of Hazelwood
Tweet-25 Information coherence and civic engagement cannot develop under Hazelwood. #25HZLWD
http://jeasprc.org/payingthecost/
by John Bowen
Information coherence is at the core of democracy.
Information coherence allows those in a democracy to compare, digest and use information. With it, communities can make informed and intelligent decisions.
Without it, communities falter.
Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in The Elements of Journalism also refer to this approach as one that allows audiences to make sense of information.
“Coherence,” the authors write, is “making sense of the facts. Coherence must be the ultimate test of journalistic truth.”
Accuracy, they write, is the foundation on which everything else – context, interpretation, debate, public communication and trust – is built.
Journalistic truth is a process, they say.
“If the foundation is faulty, everything else is flawed,” they say.
Neither the journalistic process nor information coherence works under an educational system guided by foggy and manipulative Hazelwood thinking, where prior review and prior restraint keep information from making sense, silence debate and undermine trust.
Information coherence is been a priority in schools and communities where 25 years of Hazelwood have limited – or should we say strangled – exchange of ideas and development of information coherence.
We could call it the cost of Hazelwood. Unless cured, this cost of Hazelwood has been, and will continue to be, high.
This cost includes:
• Citizens who do not trust authority figures because they never were involved with decision making in a learning environment
• Citizens who do not trust information authority presents because their background has shown them it has always been slanted or incomplete
• Citizens who do not participate in civic engagement because they have taught or have experienced education in which they had no voice
• Citizens who cannot respect the principles and actions of a free and responsible press because they have never seen one in their schools.
Given this heritage, these costs will only deepen in the future as schools reach out to control expression outside the school environment because untrained students misuse social media and the Internet to bully others.
We must, as the Student Press Law Center says, develop a cure for Hazelwood, one that empowers students to practice the essential freedoms and skills of a democracy, and become engaged with decision-making that creates an impact on their lives and on the lives of others.
We honor schools which have not paid Hazelwood’s price. We salute these schools and celebrate their leaders, whether administrators or community members, for actions leading to the path of learning and civic enrichment.
But, in the end, we have not done enough. It is not enough to note that Hazelwood has led to a decline in information coherence as well as in civic engagement. If we have not tried to intercede in this process in and outside schools, then we are, in many ways, responsible for it.
Others in this series have said it well: Hazelwood is, has been and will continue to be everyone’s problem.
Its effects will only continue unless we do all in our power to educate ourselves, our students and our communities about why we must have a Hazelwood Cure.
And then work to create one.
If we continue to ignore Hazelwood’s cost, if we do not seek a cure, then we bear the burden of responsibility for the lack of action that enables such cultural malaise to continue.
To do nothing to is chose.
What will be at the core of your plan of action? What will you do to empower a Hazelwood Cure?
Resources:
• Press Freedom in Practice
http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/docs/Foundation/Training/pressfreedom.pdf
• Cure Hazelwood
http://www.splc.org/cure.html
• Resources for school newspaper advisers
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/student-journalism-resources-for-school-newspaper-advisers/
• Media Adviser’s Forum
https://www.splc.org/classroomresources/mediaadvisers.asp
• Scholastic Journalism Resources
http://www.asjmc.org/resources/scholastic/index.php
• Statements
http://jea.org/home/about-jea/statements/
• Teaching and learning about journalism
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/teaching-and-learning-about-journalism/
• Scholastic journalism resources
http://www.hsj.org/teachers/index.cfm?requestAction=goMenuContent&menu_id=6&menu_page_item_id=16&CmsPagesID=181
• High school journalism
http://www.journaliststoolbox.org/archive/high-school-journalism/
Marshmallow fluff: What learning looks like in Hazelwood’s world
by Candace Bowen
Hazelwood stories: Jan. 14, 1988. As I walked through the main office of St. Charles (Ill.) High School, my principal waved me into his office. “Did you hear that Supreme Court decision?” he said. I didn’t need to ask which one – the whole scholastic journalism community had been worried about Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, and though we hadn’t had time to sort out all it could mean, we knew if wasn’t good. But the best defense is a good offense, so my reply to him, “Sure, I heard, but there’s not enough room in the X-Ray office for your desk, too.”
Our principal didn’t immediately start talking about prior review, but the chilling effect was there. When my staff worked on a spread about teen sexuality, they worried about the interview with a local teen mother. One editor was convinced the Supreme Court said no one could write stories on that topic. Another checked with every health teacher to be sure the “safe sex” advice – actually from Planned Parenthood – was something at least SOME of them had in their curriculum. The spread ran, and the principal wasn’t pleased, but he didn’t move his desk up to Room 217.
He wasn’t pleased about factual reporting about a possible teacher strike or criticism of the district for having far fewer guidance counselors than the American School Counselor Association recommended. But he didn’t demand to see the publication before it went to press.
Sadly, that open forum status did not continue after I left in 1994. With a new adviser, albeit one with a good background and understanding of press law, and then a succession of principals, administrators had a much heavier hand. As I moved to a new state a year later, I found out this was more common than I had feared. Principals in Ohio seemed more than willing to cut articles and predetermine taboo topics, all in the name of Hazelwood. Advisers were threatened for “not having enough control” of their student journalists, and experienced, trained advisers lost their publications to novices when the administration said they wanted to “take the program in a different direction.”
A telling example: When speaking at a nearby press day and drinking coffee with advisers who had just arrived, one asked what my presentation would be. “The educationally sound reason to not have prior review,” I answered. Several across the table said, “Oh, yes, we have that – thank goodness.” “Yes, me, too,” the other said, “and it takes so much pressure off me.” Yikes! Clearly my audience and I would not be on the same page. So…I quickly revamped the presentation and seated them all – about 12 or 15 – in a circle. I told each to tell her status as far as prior review and censorship went. To a person, those whose students had free speech rights told about stories that made a difference, principals who were hesitant but then impressed, awards they won for great content. The others complained they had a hard time recruiting and their students said they “could only write about marshmallow fluff.” By the time they had told their stories, I didn’t need to say much more: The power of Hazelwood, often far beyond even what the Supreme Court said, has taken its toll on student media.
Candace Bowen is a former president of the Journalism Education Association and current director of the Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University.
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