Lighting the way: leadership for the future
The New York Times reported on a crisis mapping operation involving what it called everyone-as-informant March 12. The Times article reported the operation suggested a new paradigm for humanitarian work.
This project, shaped to fit the needs of scholastic journalism, suggests a viable paradigm for scholastic new media to lead, not only through content but also opinion.
Such an approach would blend the mirror and candle theories into one tool rooted in a journalistic sense of leadership.
And that, said Jan Leach, assistant professor of journalism at Kent State University, former Ethics Fellow at The Poynter Institute and editor of the Akron Beacon Journal, is a perfect role for effective news media.
“The news media lead by providing information that can help audiences with the urgent and the mundane aspects of their lives,” Leach said. “This includes helping audiences make decisions on everything from candidates and issues to decisions on real estate, schools, movies and purchases.”
What Leach talks about would include:
• A strong publication voice calling for action or explaining issues and events. In a case like the Times noted, explaining why action was needed and how to accomplish it.
• Thorough reporting that explained the significance of the issues, events or problems and how to become involved and resources placing the events into perspective.
• Opportunities for involvement and interaction so members of the various affected communities could help each other or answer a call to action.
That fulfills the candle theory.
The mirror theory is also fulfilled through more mundane coverage of events, people and issues that affect people’s lives daily.
Leach sees a strong and active editorial presence as essential in this blended process.
“Newspapers and online operations that have regular, forceful editorial pages are providing steady, if controversial, leadership,” she said. “Those that are inconsistent or wishy-washy in their opinions are less reliable in terms of leadership. People look for the studied opinion, the additional information, the weighing of all sides.”
Let’s say during Scholastic Journalism Week JEA or another journalistic group (including a student one) uses the mapping model to track one day of prior restraint or review across the nation. Students, facing review or restraint, could publish to one core location details, topics, reasons given, and who is reviewing. Reported information could then be assembled and reported to give a national snapshot of issues scholastic journalists face. Individual student media could develop coverage to show the depth of the problem and take a strong position with national data to support their position.
The process could be replicated for any common issues or topics schools face. And, it could be reported and editorialized by scholastic media working individually or in collaboration.
In short, scholastic journalism’s obligation to lead is a function of strong content and editorial presence, no matter what media.
Leadership does not need to be seen as a piece of the past but as an integral aspect of journalism’s future, lighting the way.
Read MoreJust this once
In the 1970s, the American Library Association released a film for use in schools called The Speaker. The film dealt with multi-level decision making concerning free speech.
One line sticks in my mind: Just this once.
As in “what’s wrong if just this once we stop someone from speaking.”
Over the years, this translated into the realm of prior review: so what if just this once the principal prior reviews student media. Who is harmed? What is lost? How will it hurt? Who will care?
And, after all this time, journalism advisers and teachers do not have an common answer for the issues surrounding prior review.
For some, prior review gets teachers off the hook. It is a safety cushion where someone else takes the responsibility for decisions made.
For some, tolerating it or embracing it means a job. In this economy one almost cannot blame them.
For some, prior review means following commercial media when the publisher sometimes can say yay or nay to content.
For these and other reasons the scholastic journalism community has, for far too long, been unwilling to really confront this elephant in the room of journalistic learning.
Now, though, we are seeing more and more fruits of allowing just this once as it applies to prior review:
• Solid programs with solid advisers are falling to the spread of prior review. The latest is in Minnesota.
• Prior restraint, not a safer school or real educational growth, is the product of prior review.
• Administrators are starting to ask for proof that schools exist without prior review. Why? Because they just don’t believe schools exist with review since that is what administrative consulting groups and school lawyers tell them. The latest instance of this comes from Colorado.
• Several administrative consulting groups across the nation, even though they don’t say they do, endorse in open or subtle ways administrative control of student media. Prior review. For self-protection. Because it is the safe thing to do.
Because the spread of prior review by those outside the staffs of student media is so extensive, so pervasive, we as journalism educators must do more than condemn this issue. We must raise challenges that ask:
• What are workable alternatives to prior review? And then create and distribute them.
• How do we show the practice has no educational value and in fact harms student educational growth? And model our beliefs.
• How do we show that truthful, accurate and complete reporting by student media cannot take place in an atmosphere of prior review? And showcase the solid programs where such reporting thrives.
• Does the risk of just this once dropping prior review outweigh administrative fears of students running amuck? And publicize the excellence of students, who without prior review consistently show their learning works.
Our goals should thus include:
• Clear demonstration, through the use of nationwide examples, that free and responsible student media means student decision making without prior review. Not responsible to mother school but to the idea of truth and serving the school’s various publics.
• Clear documentation that schools do prosper without prior review and that their numbers are substantial. We need to let each other know when our programs are public forums by policy or practice, and we need to do so proudly so those numbers make on impact on those who claim otherwise.
• Clear modeling to administrators that their best way to monitor student media is to hire qualified and caring advisers and teachers who empower students to grow by practicing what they are taught.
It is time to actively implement our beliefs, to remind those who support prior review they are wrong.
Just this once – before it is too late.
Read MoreJust what are they teaching?
When members of the Churchill County Education Association in Fallon, Nev. thought an article in the high school student newspaper made a teacher look bad, their reaction wasn’t very educationally sound: They wanted administrators to censor the publication.
Lauren MacLean’s article in The Flash covered a controversy over audition tapes for the state honor choir and parental concern with the music teacher who, they claim, was to have sent them. Mark Goodman, Knight Chair in Scholastic Journalism at Kent State, who wrote about this in the Center for Scholastic Journalism blog, has seen the article and reports, “It is student journalism at its best: fact-based, not inflammatory, insightful, relevant. It simply gives readers the facts and lets them reach their own conclusions.”
Jerry Ceppos, dean of the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada and former executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, also expressed his concern. On the Web site for the Reno Gazette-Journal, Ceppos suggested the teachers’ union needed the colorful, two-story-tall banner now hanging in his school with the 45 words in the First Amendment sewn into it.
Luckily, no one censored anything. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, MacLean’s article was to run Friday. Its editorial concluded, “But in the little town of Fallon, a welcome spark of freedom now shines. Taking the more courageous and principled course, Mr. Lords (the principal) and Ms. Ross (the superintendent) — and young Lauren MacLean — did well.”
Should we be bothered that the superintendent told Ceppos both she and the principal read the article before publication? Maybe that’s material for another blog.
Read MoreHow do your students report the Haiti earthquake?
News about the Haiti earthquake dominated the media today, and some scholastic journalists are trying to find ways to report the devastation and loss of life.
Questions they should consider include:
• How can we localize and show readers relevance? That should be among the first concerns. What is the best way to bring the impact of the story to the readers’ community? Has anyone been to Haiti? Have family there? Are local groups involved in relief efforts? Has anyone local survived anything similar? What is the most effective way to report the situation? Commentary on the tragedy? A call to action? Reporting the issues so the reality of the situation becomes the focus? Who will become the best sources? The most credible sources? The most timely sources? Who could be primary sources so reporters are not just rehashing cnn.com or Time magazine? Are there money-raising scams surrounding relief efforts? How can readers recognize and avoid them?
• What legal issues could create problems? How can we avoid using copyrighted images with stories? What would be good resources for images? If the student publication is Web-based, to whom can students link? What are reliable resources? Publications with a subscription to MCT Campus might have a distinct advantage. What about using flash graphics or other multimedia coverage? What is the best way to do the reporting legally?
• Are there ethical considerations about what to show and print? This certainly will become an issue as more commercial media show images of bodies and devastation. What should scholastic media show and why? Assuming you can use such images with permission, will you have discussed the effects of gruesome photos? Why use them? Should your audiences be warned?
We raise these issues not to flash the red light of decision-making restraint but rather to enable the green light of ethical decisions. If your students decide such localized and relevant reporting is justified, we encourage them to do so thoroughly and with compassion.
Whatever steps they take to decide what to publish or broadcast, their decisions need to be rooted in long traditions of journalistic excellence, of publishing a story that affects their community and enables audience involvement.
That’s doing it the right way.
Read MoreThe best things to teach them
My Teaching High School Journalism course at Kent State is almost over for this semester, and I’m beginning to wonder if I have taught the right things to these education majors who may end up in media classrooms.
Sure, as usual I started with law, emphasizing unprotected speech and the stuff that can REALLY get student media in trouble. They learned about Tinker, Hazelwood, Bethel and Bong Hits and the impact these cases have. From there, we worked our way through ethical issues — the “SHOULD we?” that follows the “COULD we?” After all, without 70 percent on the law and ethics test, my students don’t pass the course. That stuff matters.
They figured out the difference between journalistic writing and “English-class writing,” and we practiced coaching and the maestro concept as we thought about how to package stories for an audience using good design and graphics. Yes, I tried to teach them everything I learned while earning my undergraduate and graduate degrees in journalism education and from MANY years in the classroom.
But did I teach them to show their students the importance of caring? The need to cover stories that should be told, not just the ones that fall into their laps? Did I make sure they won’t be afraid to tell their students they have the right and even obligation to question authority? Did I make sure they know it’s not just a matter of filling the time on air or the space on a page? Did I teach them to help those in their classes stand up for their beliefs?
Will those in my course this semester become the kind of teachers who can support their student journalists and help them make a difference?
I’ll have a new group next semester. What do YOU think I should teach them? It’s only 15 weeks of class, but what MUST be part of their learning?
Candace Perkins Bowen, MJE
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