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Knowing what New Voices means helps students grow louder in their fight for rights
by Tom McHale
We’ve Passed New Voices, Now What?
New Jersey passed student rights legislation in 2021, but only some teachers, administrators and students know the law’s protections. What can all advisers do to ensure student journalists know their rights and how to use them?
Busch Student Center’s Multipurpose Room A buzzed with the chatter of approximately 300 student journalists and advisers. They awaited the start of a Keynote panel that would kick off the Garden State Scholastic Press Association’s Fall Conference at Rutgers University. The 2022 conference was our first in-person since the pandemic and the first since New Voices passed in New Jersey in December 2021.
Moderator Bonnie Blackman took the mic and, after welcoming everyone, asked one question: “How many of you know what New Voices is?”
Read MoreMaking time for Media Literacy
by Diana Day
- Students need help now to navigate and make sense of the complicated media landscape. Photo by Jorge Franganillo on Unsplash
Even before the Israel-Hamas war began in October, bringing with it rampant misinformation and disinformation, one of my goals for my media arts and journalism classes this year was to be more intentional about teaching media literacy. I tend to react to specific events in the news and to use those charged moments to teach this crucial skill set, rather than to proactively plan more in-depth lessons and projects.
It’s clear from recent conversations with students this approach doesn’t serve them; they need help now to navigate and make sense of our complicated media landscape
I have found some outstanding resources. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but is rather a roundup of tools on my radar right now:
The Sift is published weekly during the school year by the News Literacy Project and is named after the SIFT method (formerly called The Four Moves) created by Mike Caulfield: Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, and Trace claims back to the source.
The newsletter “offers a rundown of the latest topics in news literacy — including trends and issues in misinformation, social media, artificial intelligence, journalism and press freedom. It provides discussion prompts, teaching ideas, classroom guides and a video series that feat
From the News Literacy Project, the same folks who publish The Sift. I’ve been wanting to dig into this one for a while. It’s a series of lessons that cover a number of media literacy topics, including bias, conspiracy theories, and misinformation. I tried some of the sample content and was impressed. It’s straightforward, smart, and doesn’t talk down to kids.
This quiz comes out every Friday. Now, my students ask to do the quiz if I forget. Whether you get the answers correct or incorrect, the quiz shares some context and main points after you have clicked your answer; you end up learning a lot about the news even if you don’t do well on the quiz.
Teenagers and Misinformation: Some Starting Points for Teaching Media Literacy
I am always impressed with the materials and contests in the New York Times Learning Network. The lessons typically provide a rich context and thoughtful discussion prompts and include a NYTimes article as a part of the lesson, making them a great way to get students reading the news.
Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers
This is a free e-book by Mike Caulfield, who created the SIFT method (see above). The first section is called “Why This Book?” and offers the following, which is a perfect close to this post about media literacy teaching tools:
The web gives us many such strategies, tactics, and tools, which, properly used, can get students closer to the truth of a statement or image within seconds.
Unfortunately, we do not teach students these specific techniques. As many people have noted, the web is both the largest propaganda machine ever created and the most amazing fact-checking tool ever invented.
But if we haven’t taught our students those fact-checking capabilities, is it any surprise propaganda is winning?
Read MoreExpanding upon the JEA curriculum to teach the SPJ Code of Ethics
by Kirsten Gilliland
This school year, I am teaching intro classes for the first time, including photo/digital journalism and Journalism 1-2. The past four years I’ve only taught production classes (broadcasting, newspaper, yearbook) and intro to photography/intermediate photography.
Like many journalism teachers, I turned to the curriculum section of the JEA website for guidance. After looking at my lesson options and sample curriculum maps, I created my own course layouts with ethics towards the beginning.
For photo/digital journalism specifically, I taught the “Legal and ethical considerations in photojournalism” lesson. Students at my new school are at a lower level academically than they were at my last school.
‘So, instead of providing the recommended 10 minutes to read the SPJ code of ethics individually, I decided we’d do it in chunks as a class to make sure everyone received the content and understood—they could ask questions and I could summarize/provide examples.
Read MoreSelf-care mitigates the stress of advising and advocating
by Mark Dzula
Working as an adviser can be wonderful and rewarding, especially as you work with young journalists as they take risks, realize their potential and dig into work in the field. It can be gratifying to watch a team coalesce, support each other and develop a sense of efficacy.
At the same time, our work can also be isolating, overwhelming and stressful—especially as we advocate for students’ rights and navigate conflicts with stakeholders.
That’s also part of the gratifying work, though, right? Knowing that your work as an adviser has impact in and out of the newsroom lends one a sense of professional purpose. At the same time, acting as an adviser and advocating for young people can be emotionally taxing and at times overwhelming, especially if you come into conflict with stakeholders. This blog will discuss some possible stressors and also offer suggestions for self-care and self-preservation that may help stem fatigue and protect against burnout.
Read MoreScholastic journalism aid regrowing news desert communities by reporting education issues, info
Reporting school news challenges newsroom pros, students: Part 4/4
My original blog idea started as a simple little suggestion to encourage high school student journalists to cover school board meetings and educational topics in communities without commercial media – those rural and urban areas considered news deserts. But it’s grown much bigger than that. These will be the weekly installments.
Reporting school news challenges newsroom pros, students
Part 1: We’ll explore what happened when a student reporter offered a story about her school to a local “news and digital marketing platform.” It was posted – and then….
Part 2: What do those involved with student media legal issues say about this? We’ll talk to the Student Press Law Center about what rights such young journalists have.
Part 3: How do the hyperlocal web outlets see their role when working with students – or do they see that as a possibility at all?
Part 4: Are there ways we – advisers and journalism teachers – can help students and communities get vital information, especially about local education? How can we educate those who might be working with student journalists but have no background in scholastic media and student rights and responsibilities
The News Desert
‘If no one writes about what’s happening in their meetings, no one questions their plans and proposals and how they spend tax dollars, how will anyone know if they should remain in office – or step aside for those with better ideas?’ Photo by Jesús Esteban San José on Pexels.com
by Candace Bowen, MJE
This 4-part blog’s premise: Student journalists may be able to help communities in news deserts – places that have no local media coverage and thus no good insight into local government and nothing to help them make important decisions at the polls.
Education seems like a natural coverage area for student journalists. School boards in particular make decisions that will impact a community for years to come, but if no one writes about what’s happening in their meetings, no one questions their plans and proposals and how they spend tax dollars, how will anyone know if they should remain in office – or step aside for those with better ideas?
One way is to cover more about school board decisions and other local government issues that impact the teen audience in our student media. That can be a plus – and blog content later in the year will cover some ideas about how to do that more effectively – and safely.
Having students intern or write for local community news sites, many of them grant-supported, is another way. The plus with this is the news gets to all the community. It also gives students another venue for their reporting But, with the background from the first three parts of this blog, it’s clear this won’t be easy. The question now is: How can we do — those who understand what student journalists want and need to be effective —to help the editors they might work with on these websites.
What things might such an editor need to know about a potential “employee” who’s 16 years old:
- “Just tossing them into [writing news] just doesn’t work,” said Rachel Dissell, a former student journalist and award-winning reporter with Signal Cleveland. She’s working now with 10 students from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, and she knows they need foundational skills first.
- For Dissell, that means first some lessons in civics and government. “Students need to understand the decision-making process.” She shows her students a video of a government meeting, and they discuss how to know who’s there, how to spell their names, how to attribute quotes or to paraphrase, and how to summarize what happened.
- Ben Wolford, editor of the Portager, hopes to find students in each high school in Portage County to cover educational issues. He said he knows it will take coaching students from the inception of the story to who to talk to and what questions to ask. “They haven’t had a lot of experience dealing with the subtleties of sourcing like what to do if they say it’s off the record,” he said. Yes, that will be a lot of work, but he said that’s how he and others like him learned.
- Sourcing is a big challenge for anyone working with teen journalists. Dissell helps her students learn about attribution and paraphrasing and also about accessing data and using databases to support their meeting coverage.
- Some other things we educators know, but the newsroom pros might not:
- Teens are certainly capable, but sometimes, out of necessity have spread themselves too thin. Jobs, classes (AP or an extra load), home responsibilities, often with younger siblings, sports, clubs…..)
- Some really top students have not had grammar and punctuation training the editors might expect.
- Some really top students have not had the government and history background the editors might expect.
- And then there’s the “long arm” of the school. As reported in Part 1 of this blog, not all editors would know students have First Amendment rights. “If students are going to be engaging in a total third-party activity in reference to the school district, if it is off campus, not using any sort of campus equipment, not during school hours,” as SPLC lawyer Jonathan Gaston-Falk said, the school can’t censor or regulate their speech.
This may be the biggest a-HA moment those just starting to work with teens should know. No matter if the principal makes the school look bad, no matter if he or she finds an article awkward or embarrassing.
Bottom line: Is it true?
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