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Careful preparation creates
strong mission statements
Part 2 of a series on pieces of the journalism puzzle: Mission Statements
by Candace and John Bowen
A mission statement defines your student media, shows your audience what’s important to you and helps them see why you do what you do. It’s not easy to write an effective one.
When JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Committee set it out write a sample mission statement to share, the 10 of us didn’t realize what a challenge this would be. Sure, it would take some tweaking and some discussions when this many writers work together. But we came to find out it was more than that.
[pullquote]We think you need a mission statement, and we think ours is worth consideration.[/pullquote]
The following is the model we finally agreed was best – though not perfect. We knew, for instance, we didn’t want to post a mission statement and have schools everywhere think it’s the only option. Schools are different: the student staffs, the advisers and the audiences have variations that show not one size fits all.
So here is our contribution. We think you need a mission statement, and we think ours is worth consideration. But we also share some points to think about as you write your own from scratch or adapt what we offered you.
• Audience engagement. Think about the importance of getting your audience to think and hopefully to act. Your mission should be to create media to get and keep them involved.
• Journalistic responsibility. Point out the basis of solid journalism you want as the very heart of your media: truth, integrity, completeness and accuracy.
• Additional reporting basics. Make sure your audience knows it can trust you because you also offer context to put reporting in perspective, verification that shows you double-checked, coherence that ensures it makes sense and presents all relevant information.
• Ethical reporting and editing. To complete the reporting process, present your work ethically and to professional standards for your audiences.
• Student-determined content. It should make a difference to your audience that students are in charge and decide all content for your student media. It definitely makes a difference to courts, too.
• Diversity of ideas and representation. It’s not just one clique that runs your student media. All voices contribute ideas and have representation in your media.
• Platform consistency. It’s not a newspaper policy and a separate Web, yearbook or TV station policy. As all media providers realize they are connected and each telling a story in the best way possible, it’s important the school’s media share the same policies and ethical approaches.
• School mission statement connection. It shouldn’t be surprising that school mission statements often mention the same points student media do: building thinking citizens, preparing students for democracy, etc. Tie parts of your media mission statement to those as well.
Our model, then, would look like this:
_____________ (school name) student media provide complete and accurate coverage, journalistically responsible, ethically gathered, edited and reported. Student-determined expression promotes democratic citizenship through public engagement diverse in both ideas and representation.
Part 1: Build a strong foundation
Part 3: Points to avoid in mission statements
Part 4: Fitting the pieces into a strong Foundation
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Build a strong foundation by locking in
pieces of the puzzle called journalism
Part 1 of a series on fitting the pieces of the journalism puzzle:
Knowing where to start
by Candace and John Bowen
Preparing student media for a new year often begins with design- and theme-planning. For a good number this includes summer workshops for training in reporting platforms, visual reporting approaches and the latest in apps and across-platform developments.
We hope such training also includes the basics of law and ethics. Often, we fear it does not.
Because we believe a basic understanding of legal and ethical issues is key to the puzzle of a successful year of sound journalistic media, we’d recommend the solid foundation of journalism basics to support the 2015-16 year and beyond.
Ensure students understand their legal rights and responsibilities before publication and provide them with activities and resources to prepare them for the rigors of publishing and decision-making.
Our training list to start the year and continue through it would be organized something like this:
• Outline the goals and mission of your student media
Like a road map, a goals and mission statement frames direction for student media. A mission statement presents the underlying principles student media adhere to. Goals suggest specific accomplishments used in following the mission. Both establish the how and why for students and communities alike. Like a road map, students may choose different paths from year to year but the outcome stays fixed: thorough, accurate and credible journalism.
Resources:
– New values (JEA SPRC Press Rights Minute)
– April Fool’s Editions, “Don’t be a fool” (JEA SPRC Press Rights Minute)
– Balance and objectivity (JEA SPRC Press Rights Minute)
– The role of student media (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
– The role of the adviser (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
– Mission statement development (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
– JEA Model Mission statement (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
• Train staff and editors in legal principles across platforms
Even though students might embrace online media, legal and ethical basics provide a framework for digital media now and what is yet to come. While there might be some changes, the basics of unprotected speech and the importance of knowing legal background won’t change in the foreseeable future.
Resources:
– Law of Student Press, book from the Student Press Law Center, also available on Kindle
– Student Press Law Center
– JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee
– Public forum overview (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
– Principal’s Guide to Scholastic Journalism (Quill & Scroll and JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
– Legal Guides (Student Press Law Center)
• Ensure board- and/or publication-level policies are in place
Strong board of education level and publication editorial policies reinforce principles student media use to reach their mission. Strong and effective editorial policies, carefully worded, protect not only student media but also school systems if legal issues arise. Lack of careful wording is worse than no policy at all. Policies reflect the publication’s values and commitments. Ideally, the most effective policies establish student media as designated public forums, without prior review and where students make all content decisions.
Resources
– The Foundations of Journalism: policies, ethics and staff manuals (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
– Board of education- and publication level- models (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
– Board media policies (JEA SPRC Press Rights Minute)
– Why avoiding prior review is educationally sound (Quill & Scroll Principal’s Guide)
– Eliminating prior review (JEA SPRC Press Rights Minute)
• Train staff and editors in ethical principles across platforms
Even though students might embrace online media, ethical basics provide a compass for print and digital media now and for what is yet to come. Practice in and knowledge of ethical critical thinking provides principles for journalistically responsible reporting. Reinforcement of ethical practices builds student publications steeped in ethical fitness.
Resources:
– JEA Adviser Code of Ethics (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
– Online ethics guidelines for student media (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
– Questions student staffs should discuss before entering the social media environment (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
– SPJ Code of ethics (Society of Professional Journalists)
– Critical thinking, ethics and knowledge-based practice in visual media (Journalist’s Resource)
• Establish, for online or print, a content verification process
While this might have been part of skills-oriented summer workshop training and practice, its importance goes without question. Verification, credibility, context and accuracy are the reporting cornerstones of journalism. Each is rooted in establishing a rigorous ethical process.
Resources:
– Planning and gathering information/producing content (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
– Getting it right (JEA SPRC Press Rights Minute)
– Journalism as a discipline of verification (American Press Institute)
– Verification (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
• Clarify who owns content
To avoid issues if someone tries to sell your yearbook content online or you want to sell photos, determine ahead of time who owns the content of student work. It’s important to plan this ahead of incidents.
Resources:
– Who Owns Student Content? (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
– Back to School: Who Owns What? (Student Press Law Center)
– Contribution to Collective Work U.S. Copyright Office
• Develop guidelines for handing takedown demands if online
Fielding requests for takedown demands is increasingly a decision student media have to make, either from reporters after they have left school or from sources because they do not like the story. Choices are limited, and involve ethical thinking.
Resources:
–Takedown demands (JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee)
–Responding to takedown demands (Student Press Law Center)
–Takedown requests (JEA SPRC Press Rights Minute)
Without an understanding of rights and responsibilities – the “could we?” and “should we?” of producing media, staffs can have the most attractive layouts imaginable and captivating story-telling, but they could still make legal and ethical mistakes that would ruin their chance to produce anything else for their audience.
Part 1: Build a strong foundation
Part 2: Careful preparation creates strong mission statements
Part 3: Points to avoid
Part 4: Fitting the pieces into a strong Foundation
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News literacy resource: Using NewsWhip in the classroom
Teaching news and media literacy requires a seemingly endless set of contemporary resources. As media changes, examples become outdated, and students move on to the next technology.
A primary goal of news literacy education is to help students see how media operates and its effects on society—in other words, what does the “system” of media look like today?
With this outcome in mind, I’m constantly on the lookout for tools that can shed light on the dynamics of news, social media, technology, and human behavior.
One of my favorite (although admittedly also one of my newest) resources for exploring these topics in the most up-to-date way is via NewsWhip, a website that tracks social media content, how it’s shared, and the human influence of that content.
Here’s how NewsWhip describes its work:
Through indicators like tweets, shares and comments, people signal what stories are engaging them every minute. NewsWhip’s technology tracks all of this activity for millions of stories to identify those getting the most discussion online.
While NewsWhip is designed as a sort of real-time consulting tool for media companies, its blog provides fresh content and analysis to help students discover more about media and news content today.
For example, an early September post looked at which Republican Candidate was most prominent on Facebook. Using their own data and analysis, including the tracking of shares and comments, NewsWhip provides facts and figures about how candidate information is circulating on Facebook.
The site’s blog posts are not only appropriate for teaching news literacy concepts, but they also often provide insight into using social media and media marketing tools more successfully. These are all topics student media explore on a regular basis, and they provide the perfect context for encouraging students to apply professional media lessons to student media operations.
Read MoreApply for First Amendment Press Freedom Award recognition
by John Bowen
With the recognition and celebration of Constitution Day, applications are now available for this year’s First Amendment Press Freedom Award (FAPFA).
Illinois civics law reinforces
value of journalism education
by Stan Zoller, MJE
The successful passage and subsequent signing by Illinois governor Bruce Rauner of legislation that mandates a one-semester civic education course for high school students provides more than ‘just another’ social science course.
It re-enforces the importance of journalism education.
Throughout the process, The Illinois Task Force on Civic Education cited the need for citizens to be civic literate. One way to achieve that? News literacy.
The task force noted that:
“Responsible citizens include individuals who are informed and thoughtful. They have a grasp and an appreciation of history and the fundamental processes of American democracy; have and understand the importance of news literacy; have an understanding and awareness of issues impacting their communities; have a capacity to think critically; and have a willingness to enter into dialogue with others about different points of view and to respect diverse perspectives.”
[pullquote]Quite simply, the skill that is paramount is the ability to critically think the contents of news reports no matter how they are delivered.[/pullquote]
The impact on journalism educators is simple: informed and engaged news consumers need to receive news reports that are independent, free of bias and provide information that is not only accurate, but also verifiable and transparent. The task force noted that a civics education course needs to offer students more than content; its needs to include skills, especially those related to news literacy.
Quite simply, the skill that is paramount is the ability to critically think the contents of news reports no matter how they are delivered.
Does this validate the need for a journalism course? Not solely, but it is a message that administrators need to hear. Ethically produced journalism that embellishes the basic fundamentals of news literacy has a new goal – at least in Illinois – to provide news consumers, as Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach note in “The Elements of Journalism” information that people need to live their lives and to also understand the world. They also write that it needs to be “meaningful, relevant and engaging.”
To achieve this, the need for student reporting to be ethical and adhere to media laws is at a new high. That’s because students, like other news consumers, are no longer just looking to be entertained, but informed so they can become not only active at school, but also in the civic process as well.
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