A four-part blog:
Emma’s story Part 1 of 4
One student journalist attempts to reach a larger audience
One student journalist attempts to reach a larger audience
by Candace Bowen, MJE
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 to – follow the story
Student journalists’ role in reporting on education grows where there are News Deserts
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 aa597this? 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?
by Candace Bowen, MJE
She reached out to TAPinto, “a network of local news and digital marketing platforms,” opening in towns that have no local newspaper or news website. The franchise currently has nearly 100 such outlets across the nation, many in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Florida.
It was spring 2023, right after yet another school shooting, when junior Emma Levine decided those in her New Jersey community needed to hear local student voices about this issue.
Emma didn’t work on her student newspaper, though she had taken journalism and hopes to have that as her college major in another year.
“The whole idea behind what I wanted to write was to reach more people, to be a student voice.” She said she hoped to show how her school was reacting to school shootings. To do that, she interviewed a student, a teacher and the school’s principal at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in New Jersey.
All three of her interviewees knew her purpose and her plan to have this published in TAPinto so community members would know what the school was doing. She carefully double checked her facts with all three. “I wanted to be sure it was correct,” she said, and she did make one minor change.
The article was posted on a Wednesday, and, by Friday, Emma heard from her editor. She said “it had to be taken down.” According to Levine, “The school’s communications officer insisted the three interviewed had no idea this was to be published.” So the TAPinto editor removed the story.
The editor wanted to know “what else I could write” because Emma was considered an unpaid intern. But Levine said she was “super determined to get it back up, even if that meant making some changes.” She tried talking to the superintendent, communications officer and principal, but none of that happened until June.
“I thought it was important to get the piece out there,” Levine said, but the communications officer said the superintendent had “grave concerns” about what was posted in the article. Because Levine was working for “an outside entity,” she should have gone through the communications officer to get to talk to the principal. And, no, even taking things out wasn’t a solution.
Levine said she “took that hit and moved on,” writing two more articles for TAPinto during the summer. The principal later approached her about being “the student voice as part of an internship for credit through the school.” She said she told him that was “great idea” but she didn’t want credit for this. She never heard more about that proposal.
Levine does encourage other students to try to write for their local news outlets. She said she learned a lot about how the (news) process works.
Emma said, overall, she learned some “big takeaways,” including that “education is about putting out fires.” She was not being supported as an opportunity-seeking student. Her hardest takeaway, however, was that a lot of education is about “putting out fires.”
“My principal wasn’t going to bat for me – but my journalism teacher was,” Levine said.
Bringing help to news deserts: Lesson Plan
Description
The Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media at University of North Carolina first reported on the “news desert” phenomenon in 2016. And the picture only became more dire. Today, the Center’s definition is “a community, either rural or urban, with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at the grassroots level.”
Think about it: If voters don’t know what’s going on in government, how can they make informed decisions in the voting booth? How can they choose the right leaders if all they hear is hype from one side or even conflicting information from several sides? As far as schools go, how can they decide who should be on the school board, the group that makes important decisions about curriculum, administrators and policies that impact everyone?
In a news desert that doesn’t have trained journalists seeking truth and expert opinions about education in its community, students can help fill that void. What can students do to ensure factual and useful information gets to voters before they go to the polls? How can they help their families and neighbors and still learn a lot as they do so?
That’s where this lesson plan can get the process started.
Objectives
- Students will acknowledge that local news media are missing important stories about education in their community.
- Students will recognize how information about certain topics make a difference in how voters will react.
- Students will be practice news coverage that is well-sourced and fairly balanced.
- Students will set up a plan to start filling the holes in educational news coverage in their communities.
| CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.8 | Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid, and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning. |
| CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.7 | Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person’s life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account. |
| CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.4 | Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper). |
| CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.6 | Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose. |
Length
Two or more class periods – to introduce and set up the possibilities. (Four days between to give students time to use the graphic organizers for their “research.”
Materials / resources
- Do you live in a news desert? A report from Penelope Muse Abernathy, Knight Chari in Journalism and Digital Media Economics
- News Deserts in Education Graphic Organizer for looking for media coverage of education to use for the assignment below.
- Potential Stories Graphic Organizer to brainstorm for education/school stories the staff could dover.
- More complete Graphic Organizer from U.S. News Deserts to keep track of all coverage.
Day 1 step-by-step
- Bell-ringer: Ask students to write on a slip of paper where they and their family get their news. Tell them to be specific – which websites, newspapers, magazines, television, social media, friends, etc.
- Then zero in by asking them where they get their information about what’s going on in their school district? What kinds of stories do they see or hear about local schools and education? (NOTE: If students consume little media, give them time to hunt for local stories online and see what they can find. You might start by listing some possible categories: school board decisions, school board meetings, school district hiring/firing, curriculum content/books, topics, etc., activities in classes, sports scores and game coverage, sports coaching, sports equipment, building conditions/maintenance, extra-curricular activities — clubs, debate, student government etc.) Is that information important to voters? Is it available to them?
- If they are in an educational news desert, this may be difficult, so stop the process when students start complaining they are finding nothing. You’ve made your point.
- Share with them the definition of a news desert. (See pulled quote halfway down this page)
- Discuss if students think they are in a news desert, specifically about their local schools. Why or why not? List on the board the stories of things going on in their school district that community members should know about. Help students separate rumor from reportable information.
- On their own computers or one the teacher uses to project, look at the “Do you live in a news desert?” map and explanation. Also use the pull-down below it to look at your state. What are you learning?
- Distribute the two graphic organizers and discuss keeping track over the next four days what they find in local media about their schools and what they believe from being in the schools SHOULD be reported.
Five days later step by step
- First discuss the findings of education coverage in your community. How extensive is it? What stories are being told? Who is telling them? Do they seem accurate and thorough?
- Then discuss what is missing. Make a list on the board of the stories students think the community should know and why they should know this.
- When most stories are listed, then go back and fill in who could/should be sources for reporters trying to tell these stories.
- Finally – and this might take several days to work through – what ways could this class/staff get the important information out to the community? Things go consider:
- Who would do the reporting? Whom would they interview?
- What media outlets could they use?
- Student news website?
- Student print media?
- Instagram?
- Twitter?
- Facebook?
- Any other potential outlets?
- How would be promote this and let the community know it is for them?
- What are the pros and cons of trying to do this?
Teacher notes:
Clearly, this is an ongoing commitment. Students would have to see the value and what would be gained by doing this. And they can’t turn into local community reporters overnight. But even if just two or three important stories get out that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, it’s a way to help the community, the students, the faculty, and, in essence, democracy.
Read MoreWorld Press Day: Its freedoms ‘carry responsibility’ for us all
by John Bowen, MJE
May 3 is World Press Freedom Day. A day to celebrate press freedom.
On her Facebook post May 3, colleague Barb Hipsman Springer wrote, “as journalism goes, so goes democracy. Remember that freedoms carry responsibility for you, too.”
Noble words and commitments. Such statements often receive forceful agreement. Cheers and applause. A raised fist. All warranted, but maybe not enough.
April 29, Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn, in a letter from the editor, raised another idea, one he said might seem out of place, especially to journalists.
The letter from the editor can be found here.
Read MoreCreating inquiring minds or censoring them?
A divided nation faces book and curriculum censorship, plus moves to prohibit discussion of anti-racist ideas in schools
by Candace Bowen, MJE
Can you teach controversial books in your class?
I always warn my students how dangerous question leads are and how a wrong answer can scare a reader away. But the question you just read is now my abiding concern – and should be yours, too, if you think students need to be challenged to think and to expand their minds.
A New York Times article announcing readers’ choices of the best 25 books in the last 125 years sparked a discussion on my Facebook page recently that should be a warning to everyone. The books ranged from “Charlotte’s Web” to “1984,” and “The Grapes of Wrath” to “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Not many comments into the strand, an English and journalism teacher, Sandy Cato, from the Northwest, wrote, “This list is interesting to me because of how few of these we would ever be able to get approved for use in school classrooms.”
“They are problematic,” she explained further, “and so many districts have become subtle censors by simply not approving or refusing to purchase important texts. Districts seem to choose to placate rather than educate if it risks conflict.”
Others added concerns related to similar issues – especially books that cover anything about race, sex/gender or politics. Some teachers had even been threatened or told flat out not to teach certain books. Now that more and more parents and community members are attending school board meetings, the battles about what to teach – and what NOT to teach – have even made headlines. The Intellectual Freedom Blog of the American Library Association covered more than 20 like these in its Jan. 7, 2022, posting:
- The Atlanta Journalism-Constitution reported a member of the Georgia General Assembly is writing legislation to “shield children from age-inappropriate materials,” such as transgender issues, even though a national survey showed 20 percent of transgender and nonbinary youths reported attempting suicide in the previous year.
- The Mississippi Free Press wrote about its state auditor supporting possible legislation to “ban educators from teaching ‘anti-racist’ ideas in schools.” This he posted on Facebook.
- NBC News focused its online article about a Texas school district that had pulled two award-winning graphic novels by Black author and illustrator Jerry Craft, one of many Black authors whose books are being banned, parents claiming they teach critical race theory.
The current “This American Life” podcast for Jan. 7, 2022, is “Talking While Black,” with Act Two devoted to an interview with Jerry Craft, who is really amazed that his “New Kid” graphic novel was so controversial. From a transcript, Chana Joffe-Walt, who interviewed him said, “What’s so interesting to me about this book in particular being kind of drawn into this CRT battle that’s supposedly about history. But your book is not a history book. This is literally just you writing down the story of your life.
Jerry Craft replies, “Right, yeah. It literally is based on what I actually see. There’s nothing that I haven’t lived myself.”
Now that more and more parents and community members are attending school board meetings, the battles about what to teach – and what NOT to teach – have even made headlines. The Intellectual Freedom Blog of the American Library Association covered more than 20 like these in its Jan. 7, 2022, posting.
The American Library Association’s Banned Books Week annually points out the harm of limiting student access to books and supports students’ right to explore and learn. About last year’s theme – “Books Unite Us, Censorship Divides Us” — the ALA website pointed out, “Sharing stories important to us means sharing a part of ourselves. Books reach across boundaries and build connections between readers. Censorship, on the other hand, creates barriers.”
For 2022, Banned Books Week is Sept. 18-24.
There is hope, though. Further down in my Facebook post, Jenna Bates, journalism and English teacher at Bio-Med Science Academy in northeast Ohio, said, “It may help a bit to know that it’s not all districts. Where I teach, I — and I alone — decide the curriculum for my ELA course. I’m starting ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ next week (only one student requested an alternate book), and we’ll do ‘The Hate U Give’ later this year. I’m lucky, but I do share your concerns about the profession and what it means to the future.”
When I taught high school English in Illinois, I must admit feeling a certain personal satisfaction when teaching “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a book the librarian removed from my high school library in Des Moines, Iowa, but one that has such important messages to deliver.
Today, I think one step further and wonder if some of our leaders would have been better off if they had read and taken to heart Atticus’s advice: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
Books can teach us a lot about each other we might now learn any other way.
For information about teaching controversial books
Want to teach a controversial book but aren’t sure where to start? The Harvard Graduate School of Education has a website called “Usable Knowledge: Relevant research for today’s educators.” A Jan. 9, 2019 post by Jill Anderson, “Bringing Controversial Books into the Classroom,” has a list of six tips and explanations to help.
Read MoreWhose values?
Which shall shape journalism’s future? Values established by algorithms? Clickbait? Media revitalized by required journalism in schools? Democracy may hinge on which society values
by Jan Ewell
“Everyone is so friggin’ crazy! I’m going to quit reading the news and unsubscribe from everything,” a friend said to me.
I asked what caused her despair. She is an intelligent woman, a medical professional with her own practice. She sent me a link to a Scientific American article.
As a retired journalism teacher, I am called upon at least once a week to justify press decisions or to assuage the livid or the depressed. At that moment my friend was one of the livid.
Her link https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nominees-for-a-science-award-were-all-white-men-nobody-won/ takes me to “Nominees for a Science Award Were All White Men—Nobody Won.”
Read More