New Quick Tips listing can help provide
solutions, guides to media issues
Working on a sensitive story? Looking to add new ethical guidelines to help students deal with new technology? Want to finalize the process to use if students wish to run political ads or endorsements?
Quick Tips can help with ethical guidelines supported by reasoning and staff manual procedures to reach outcomes you desire.
If you or your students have suggestions to add to our list, please contact SPRC Director Lori Keekley.
This is our latest Quick Tips list. We hope you find its points useful.
Each newly posted QT has a short annotation and a link to the materials. Each addition also has links for more depth and related content.
To see a list of already posted Quick Tips, please go here.
Read MoreSolutions Journalism
Solutions Journalism doesn’t offer its solution to issues. It does report on what others haveworked and what has not
by Kristin Taylor
David Bornstein co-authors the “Fixes” column in the New York Times, a column focused on solutions journalism. In his 2012 TED talk, Bornstein explains why he has pursued solutions in his investigative journalism rather than simply focusing on the problem.
Seeking journalistic truth
Helping student journalists to seek the truth
by Kristin Taylor
What does it mean to be truthful? Is truthfulness accurate numbers and statistics? Multiple points of view? Context to help the reader understand the time and place and other circumstances? All of the above?
Journalistic truth “means much more than mere accuracy,” according the seminal text “The Elements of Journalism” by Kovach and Rosenstiel. “It is a sorting-out process that takes place between the initial story and the interaction among the public, newsmakers and journalists.”
Read MoreHandling sponsored content
Student media, when faced with publishing sponsored content, should act carefully and with the best interests of the audience/consumer first.
Although it is quite possible scholastic media will never face making a decision to run content known as sponsored 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.
Read More
Becoming a public forum for student expression
The importance of public forums in student media
Guideline
All student media publications should strive to be a “public forum for student expression” in 
order to be granted more protection under current free press laws.
Question:
What is a “public forum for student expression?” Why is it important for student media outlets to be designated as such?
Key points/action:
- A “public forum” implies that the publication is set up as an open forum for expression. This ultimately means any person with an opinion can be published/broadcasted in the media outlet (through letters to the editor, call ins, etc.). This “openness” to the public is important because the publication is then elevated from a closed student publication to a place where community discussion and debate can occur,
- and those democratic ideals hold more legal protection.
- A “public forum for student expression” is a forum where student editors have been given the right to make final content decisions.
- Public forum = a forum where anyone has a right to add to the discussion
Stance:
All student media outlets should declare themselves “open forums for student expression” in their editorial policy and should open expression rights to the public (by allowing letters to the editor, etc.). Students should also truly make all final content decisions, thus transferring the legal responsibility of the publication, in theory, to the students.
Reasoning/suggestions:
What does this mean for student journalists? 1.) they should publish any letter to the editor they receive, as long as it does not classify as unprotected speech and follows established publication guidelines, in order to establish the publication as truly an “open forum”; and 2.) somewhere within their editorial pages, a condensed editorial policy should be published with each issue establishing the publication as a “public forum for student expression where students make all decisions of content.”
Directions for how readers can submit letters to the editor should also be published, as well as clarifying statement that student editors make all final content decisions.
Bottom line: Forum status matters, especially for schools not protected by state free press laws (like New Voices). It may be the only legal protection students have in a court of law.
Resources:
Related: Tinker Standard, Tinker v. Hazelwood, Unprotected Speech
Read More
Public or independent schools:
Whose expression is protected is complex
School type, court decisions state laws and how student media are established can all have a role
by Kristin Taylor
If public school student journalists face censorship, they can turn to the First Amendment. Because public schools are funded by the government, school officials are government agents. Private (also known as “independent”) schools are not funded by the government, so those school officials are not government agents — the First Amendment does not apply.
This might make one assume that public school students have full speech protection and private school students do not, but it’s not that simple.
Read More