Fitting the puzzle pieces together
This week’s blogpost is a puzzle of sorts.
What do the following have in common?
• 8 ways a landmark Supreme Court ruling has changed student journalism?
• Scholastic journalism: Skills for the 21st Century (and two related pieces in the magazine)
• Brennan students petition to reinstate lesbian couple’s yearbook photo
They should remind us that good people involved in all aspects of scholastic education, including administrators, still recognize and fight for what is right. The links should also remind us the fight continues no matter how long and hard we have fought it.
Lastly, we should take note of why the fight is not over and why we must continue to support those most affected as they strive to live out our democratic heritage.
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Ethics by any other name: Why process is more important than verbiage
By Megan Fromm
This weekend, I had the pleasure of joining some of the greatest thinkers and doers in scholastic journalism at Kent State University to revise and update Quill & Scroll’s Principal’s Guide to Scholastic Journalism.
For two intense days, we sat roundtable and edited—line by line, word by word— the entire publication.
During the course of our work session, we often discussed the merits of certain ethical tenets, namely, “fair,” “balanced” and “objective.” Despite our collective and individual commitments to ethical and legal scholastic journalism, we could not reach a consensus about which tenets were more authentic, let alone how to interpret each of them.
Through a bit of lively, respectful debate, I learned that even those teachers, professors and journalism professionals whom I respect most have different beliefs about what makes ethical journalism.
I was adamant that the term “fair” gets a bad rap and covers a host of sins that “balanced” and “objective” often overlook. Others, preferring the latter terms to describe their ethical approach, thought the term “fair” was loaded because—after all—what could be fair to everyone?
After some reflection, I realized we were all talking about the same process, the same methodical and careful approach a journalist takes to ensure the very best, most accurate, inclusive and contextual content.
Ethics, then, is not as much a moving target as today’s media pundits might have us believe. Quite simply, ethics is a conscious effort, above all other motives, to do the right thing for our readers, subjects and the public’s right to know.
As the spring semester unravels with full force and obligations such as state testing commence, it can be easy to compromise the ethical process for the sake of timeliness and self-preservation.
When it’s crunch time, it is easy to think you are satisfying the ethical tenets of your news organization (whatever they may be) without actually adhering to the process that makes ethical journalism flourish.
Instead of bearing lip service to those core beliefs, take some time this month to step back, discuss your publication’s ethical process and evaluate your work thus far. Where can your students do better? How can they be a little more careful? A little more accurate? A little more thorough? Understanding how they make ethical decisions is the only way for students to value the end result, no matter what you call it.
Read MoreShowcasing journalism’s energies..standing out in a crowd
An amazing number of advisers and students celebrated their creativity and willingness to engage in the viral potential of the Harlem Shake and Gangnam Style crazes recently. True student work should be celebrated and encouraged.
But wouldn’t it be nice – and appropriate – if journalism programs, no matter their platforms, would jumpstart journalistic excellence by devoting the same attitude and enthusiasm for publishing coverage that exhibits depth and substantive reporting skills?
At a time when we seek a Cure for Hazelwood, we need to showcase our best journalistic skills as much as those designed to entertain.
A slightly beleaguered Scholastic Press Rights chairperson
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New lessons on fairness, crisis coverage,
media literacy and more for NIE Week
March 4-8 marks Newspaper In Education Week, the annual celebration of newspapers as a classroom resource across a variety of subjects.
This year, the American Press Institute and the Newseum have teamed up to deliver a new, three-unit curriculum with six lessons aligned to Common Core State Standards. Lessons focus on the following topics:
- Newspapers in Your Life – What’s News Where? and The First Rough Draft of Histor
- In the Newsroom – The Fairness Formula and Planning for the Unpredictable
- Media Literacy – Where News Comes From and Evaluating the News
If you’re not familiar with API and the Newseum, here’s a little background. In 2012, the former Newspaper Association of America Foundation was merged into the American Press Institute. API, now headquartered at NAA in Arlington, Va., is continuing the NAA Foundation’s long tradition of producing new curriculum materials in honor of NIE Week. The Newseum, the “museum of news” located in Washington, D.C., also has a tradition of providing educational resources for teachers.
“With so many sources of news and information at their disposal, young people more than ever need to be educated media consumers,” API Executive Director Tom Rosenstiel said in a news release. “This curriculum is designed to help educators accomplish that. It makes use of original, professional journalism produced by local newspapers and combines it with the Newseum’s educational resources for something that is timely, real and proven in schools.”
Lessons in the NIE Week 2013 curriculum incorporate existing Newseum resources, such as the Today’s Front Pages gallery. They are geared toward middle- and high-school students, but include extension activities for elementary students. Although they are being released for NIE Week, lessons are “evergreen” in terms of subject matter and can be used anytime.
Need more lessons aligned to Common Core? Check out High Five, an integrated, three-unit curriculum that includes reading, writing, journalism, grammar, linguistics and visual literacy. All materials are age-appropriate for middle-school students. The curriculum uses the daily newspaper as a textbook and information source.
Marina Hendricks, a member of the SPRC, is director of communications at NAA and former manager of the NAA Foundation.
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Four 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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