Tweet9: Establish a network of support
Establish a network of alumni and parents to support you. Create allies for when trouble arises. #25HZLWD http://jeasprc.org/reaching-out-informing-the-community-about-key-principles-of-journalism/
You never know when you could use a friend or two or 10 or more. There are lots of good reasons to have a parent and alumni booster group — they bring food to late work nights, raise money to help defray costs for going to conventions and act as chaperones on field trips.
BUT if you need someone to support you and speak up for the value of what you do, stand up for your right to use your voices or to have a publications class, those booster club members know how hard you work and what your media mean to you. They’ll be there for something more important than bringing pizza to you at 10 p.m.
The rest of the school community might know more about you, too, if you have an active j club that has activities and projects that benefits the school. For more info about that, keep reading.
Resources
• Consider joining j, JEA’s student organization. j offers opportunities for student journalists to connect with their peers across the country.
http://jea.org/home/resources-for-students/j/
• Check out “Friends of the Spoke” for a model you can use when creating your own publications support group.
http://www.friendsofthespoke.org/Friends_of_The_Spoke.html
• Reach out to inform community about journalism
http://jeasprc.org/reaching-out-informing-the-community-about-key-principles-of-journalism/
Tweet8: Our job is to fight censorship
Understand how and why prior review limits your expression and endangers the school and administrators. #25HZLWD
Prior review is not only damaging to the professional practice of journalism, but it also creates a stifling, restricted community. When student voices are marginalized, the educational process suffers, and foundational democratic principles such as truth and transparency are undermined.
Often, it is administrators or school district officials who exercise prior review. However, sometimes advisers take on the ultimate role of editor, thinking this is best for the students, publication, and the school. Not only is this educationally invalid thinking, it creates potential legal issues for the adviser and the school community.
Read more about prior review below to find out why students should have final editorial control, and why advisers and administrators are modeling best practices when they don’t have the final say.
Resources:
• Read JEA’s official statement on prior review
http://jea.org/home/about-jea/statements/
• Find advice to help your administrators understand the damaging effects of prior review
http://www.jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Foundationadminadvice.pdf
• Analzying prior review
http://www.jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Fightingpriorreview.pdf
• Key questions to ask of those who engage in prior review
http://jeasprc.org/questions-for-those-who-prior-review/
• Guidelines if facing prior review
http://jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/2012-Guidelines-if-facing-review.pdf
• Prior review questions
http://jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/2012-PriorreviewQ.pdf
• As journalism teachers, our job is to fight censorship
http://jeasprc.org/sjw11-as-journalism-teachers-our-job-is-to-fight-censorship/
Read More
High school students, teachers
report student media censorship
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Twenty-five years after the Supreme Court limited First Amendment protections for high school student journalists, a survey of students and media advisers attending a national journalism convention suggests that censorship in their schools is a common occurrence.
Of the 4,540 students and teachers who attended the National High School Journalism Convention in San Antonio, Tex., Nov. 15-18, 2012, 500 students and 78 advisers responded to survey questions asking about their experiences with censorship of student media.
Significant numbers of both students (42 percent) and advisers (41 percent) said school officials had told them not to publish or air something. Fifty-four percent of students reported a school official reviews the content of their student news medium before it is published or aired. And 58 percent of advisers said someone other than students had the final authority to determine the content of the student media they advise.
Read More
A Teacher’s Kit for curing Hazelwood
by Megan Fromm
January 13, 2013, we commemorate a bittersweet milestone in scholastic publications history: the 1988 Supreme Court ruling in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier. This decision institutionalized censorship in most public schools in America, and our students have been publishing in its shadow ever since.
This month, JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Commission seeks to re-engage teachers, students, administrators and local media in a discussion about Hazelwood’s deleterious effects on civic education and scholastic journalism. Similarly, the Student Press Law Center’s “Cure Hazelwood” campaign is aimed at making the public aware of Hazelwood’s ill effects on our nation’s schools. Together, we hope to encourage administrators and policymakers to reconsider a stifling decision that has long plagued our education system.
We hope you will use, during the coming weeks, our Teacher Kit with resources, lesson plans, and calls to action to energize your students and staffs to learn more about—and ultimately take action against— Hazelwood.
Read MoreHazelwood anniversary a good opportunity
for reflective thought, appropriate action
With Jan. 13, the 25th anniversary of the Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier decision, less than two weeks away, now is a good time to begin to plan how you and your students will note the event.
The Student Press Law Center has created two ways:
• One is a website that will provide resources, “horror stories” and more about the impact of Hazelwood on all students, not just on journalists.
• The second is a fact sheet about the 25th anniversary, with information and links students might find helpful in formulating news and oped pieces about the impact the decision has created.
JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Commission will also join with the SPLC through a parallel series of teaching materials, activities and stories available in early January. Also look for Hazelwood-related tweets and the hashtag #25HZLWD from the commission and 45words, among others. We invite you to follow along with the materials and to join us with your involvement.
For sobering view of Hazelwood’s impact, check out Hazelwood’s 25th anniversary: ‘Educating ‘ a generation of sheep by David Cuillier.
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