Student newspapers have two ways to avoid legal problems. Your students can never print anything controversial, creative or of interest to their readers, or you can teach your students how to write about controversy responsibly.

This responsibility begins long before the story is printed. Having your editors check the interview notes of the reporters can quickly reveal that the students haven’t talked to the all the right people to get a balanced story. It gives time to check out possible liability and to get permission to use quotes in place.

It also prevents procrastination, always a problem for all of us.

Students often only talk to their friends, or, worse yet, use the internet and don’t localize the story by talking to students, administrators or local sources. Brainstorming sources and questions can help get students off in the right directions.

Have your editors negotiate reasonable individual story deadlines for these notes and stick to them. Extending deadlines needs to be done ahead of time and in extreme cases only. If a student isn’t “dead” for missing a deadline, deadlines don’t mean a thing.

Interview skills are a sellable skill and one that journalism classes teach well. You might remind your administrators that, although they might prefer not to answer students’ questions about controversial topics, the students are really learning important skills that will help them in all sorts of situations throughout their lives.

Role playing interview situations with beginners can teach those skills and can be loads of fun as well.

Adding “interview notes” to the list of deadlines can help get things moving early and make sure that stories are well balanced and have the important information that will avoid legal problems when the story is published.
Fern Valentine, MJE

So with all of this recent hubbub surrounding President Obama’s speech about education, I’ve come to a conclusion: it has never been more important for teachers, journalism teachers in particular, to be adamant in making sure their voices are heard alongside and in opposition to those calling for speeches like the President – any President – made yesterday to be taboo in our classrooms.

In fact, if we don’t push back at this with just as much furor and vigor as those parents do, I’d say it is tantamount to an abdication of our First Amendment rights. In my classroom, I teach the First Amendment and sing its glories as often as I can. If I fail to tell my administrators my beliefs as a teacher about what has happened and fail to push back against these type of crusades, then am I not failing my students as a role model, as someone who is a vigorous protector of First Amendment rights?

Since the day our guidelines for dealing with the President’s speech came out, I’ve been incensed, and it is not because of my political leanings. It is because I am a teacher. I was hired to teach the curriculum of my courses because I have the proper certification and experience and because I am a professional. That means I have been entrusted with taking the district approved curriculum and teaching it to the best of my abilities and how it best suits me and my students. While I am happy to have input from parents about their child’s education, it is my belief as an educator, I am well-suited to determine whether or not a speech by the President of the country in which their child lives in is appropriate material for my classroom.

As teachers who run publications grounded in the First Amendment, we have all dealt with someone who has been unhappy with something the newspaper, website or yearbook has published, or that the podcast, news show or radio station has broadcast. We have heard opposing viewpoints from all sides of an issue and it makes our publications stronger for this feedback.

I’m happy to know the parents of students in my district are aware of what’s going on and feel so moved to contact our administrators and voice their opinions. Debate and dissent are essential to the functioning of a democracy. However, I’m well beyond dismayed that our administrators are so lacking in backbone when it comes to standing up to the slightest whiff of criticism. Criticism is the crucible that makes our schools better. As the President said on Tuesday, “Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures.”

Our nation’s best schools will be the ones who stand up and try new things and let their teachers, administrators, students and parents discover, together with input from the whole community, what works best, not just the voices of an overly motivated and loud few.

In the ongoing discussion on the Obama education speech, one JEA member suggested the press provided too much of a platform for fringe opinions instead of balanced reporting.

While that may be, I’d like to suggest something H. L. Hall always stresses as important: digging.

All too often, in commercial media and in scholastic media we see too much surface reporting and not enough digging for background and perspective. Digging would add substantial answers to the why and the how elements of news.

Frankly, there has been just too little of this type of reporting lately – in commercial and scholastic media.

So, let’s see what scholastic media can show everyone: how to really report the Obama speech story like no one else can.

Let’s see some digging:

• Why would schools back off running the President’s speech?

• Why would parents oppose (or support) their children hearing it?

• Who (if anyone) has used the Internet and other communication to spread lies/truth about the speech’s purpose? How can the audience tell?

• What does this say (if anything) about schools’ willingness to provide a chance for students to ask questions? Has this been an ongoing process? What is the historical perspective?

• What does the furor around this speech say about a school’s willingness to trust its students to think critically? Do school officials even see this as a factor? If not a factor, what drove their decision, one way or another?

• What does a school’s reaction (or a community’s reaction) in this instance say about their willingness to confront challenges from any future viewpoint?

Can scholastic media reporters find sources —  and maybe even answers — for these questions?

You betcha.

If they dig.

Which brings up another point H.L. likes to raise: Credibility. If we – commercial or scholastic media – do not show people we still can dig for answers, verify information and synthesize it into meaningful reporting, we cannot complain when people challenge our credibility.

We have it damaged it ourselves.

There’s no political agenda here. Those leaning to the left and those leaning to the right both need to pay attention. This is about education and what we simply must be teaching our students about checking their facts and their sources.

We used to teach students to be careful of what they used from the Internet so they wouldn’t accidentally get minor facts wrong.  We didn’t want them trusting some 7th grader’s report on Martin Luther King Jr. when they needed information for a Black History Month article. We made sure they knew the difference between .com and .edu when it came to potential slant on a topic. We showed them how to be sure information was current, especially for topics that change frequently.

But today’s students — and tomorrow’s voters — are getting more and more information online, information about how they conduct their lives, whom they trust, how they cast their ballots. They aren’t just going to get a date wrong on a paper or buy a product that’s not as good as they thought it was.

If they aren’t careful — if they aren’t taught — they are going to accept as fact radical opinions with no foundation. They are going to believe political spin doctors. They are going to trust the unreliable and cite as fact the unsubstantiated. And then they are going to forward those “facts” to all their friends so the misinformation grows.

Instead, let’s teach them to question sources, dig deeper, ask for more answers, demand credibility. If they learn that now, they aren’t going to repeat as gospel what they hear in the blogosphere or read on some questionable “news” site.

They’ll know to take that as a starting point, but they’ll also know it check it out.

Candace Perkins Bowen, MJE

Two events are drawing a lot of commentary this week.

They are also great starting points for classroom discussion and student media reporting beyond just giving opinions.

One is whether the Associated Press should have published photos of a young Marine mortally injured along with a story about him and his mission. The other is the firestorm of opinion surrounding President Barack Obama’s upcoming speech to students.

Both seem to draw polarization and backlash.

We need to see them in student media and journalism classrooms as rational discussion – and reporting– instead.

First, the Marine photos and story really could make for exceptional ethical discussion (how you decide concepts like doing the least harm, choosing loyalty and meeting the greater good, among others). The dilemma transfers easily to scholastic media (do you publish photos of injuries and defeat or only victories?).

Second, the question of whether students in a class should be able to watch the President’s live speech also strikes at the heart of our democracy. If schools cannot openly discuss ideas and issues so they learn how to handle them, how to investigate them, then what is the purpose for our schools? How can students – and adults – know to support or to oppose ideas, issues and people unless they can hear and critically evaluate them?

If schools must first prior review ideas and issues of the President, ideas and issues similar to those other presidents presented in schools, what are students learning? They are not learning to think, to reflect and to decide for themselves.

It would be wonderful if, over the next several weeks, journalism teachers and advisers share how they – and more importantly their students– handled these two issues.

It would also be wonderful if student media led the way in substantive, digging and balanced reporting of these issues. Maybe then adults could more clearly see that student media can be responsible, accurate and thorough – without prior review.

After all, sometime in the future other students might ask their parents (our students), “what did you do during this Great Time of Reflection?”

On Aug. 27th, I talked about the learning that is lost when J-programs are cancelled.  But how do we save them or get them reinstated?   Parents are the key.   Administrators and school board members may not pay attention to teachers whose programs are threatened, but they certainly pay attention to parents.   Parents of students in threatened programs and parents of former students need to emphasize to administrators and board members how much their students learned.   They need to make it clear that the learning on a publications staff is unique and helps student succeed in college and beyond.

Even if a current program isn’t threatened for now, it still needs parental support.  Administrators certainly get negative phone calls when some one in the community doesn’t like a topic covered in a school publication, so positive messages can offset the bad and create a positive image for the programs.

I realize it is too late to save programs cancelled for Fall Semester, but reinstatement of programs takes time so parents need to make their displeasure well known.   If they don’t want to phone, every school district administrator has an e-mail address these days.  How long does it take to send an e-mail to administrators and board members?   If they all get 20 or 30 e-mails, they are bound to pay some attention.  These parents are the voters in their district.

Some advisers have set up formal parent groups that not only support the program when it is threatened, but provide other support even down to goodies on layout nights.   Even after their children graduate, parents in Vince DeMiero’s group stay active.  He is adviser at Mt. Lake Terrace High School in Washington state and current president of WJEA.   Think about organizing your parents.   Their support could be crucial when your program is under fire either about an issue or even its existence.

Testimonials from former students are also great.   They are voters as well and can tell administrators how working on a publication while they were in high school helped them in college and beyond no matter what career path they chose.

Teachers need to fight to keep J-programs alive, but they don’t have to do it alone.  Work to alert your supporters and then keep the administration and school board informed about their support.   Stress that learning is what schools should be about and J-programs provide unique learning opportunities.

Fern Valentine, MJE

The Journalism Education Association and The Center for Scholastic Journalism are looking for more schools who are public forums for student expression.

Why? Because we have had several requests for numbers – and for schools in particular areas.

So, if your school’s student media are public forums for student expression, let us know by going here and completing the form.

For student media to be designated as a public/student forum, the school must either:
• Have a school board- or administrator-enacted policy stating students make final content decisions of protected speech*, or
• Have a student media-generated policy declaring students make all final content decisions and also indicating/verifying that practice has been in effect at least two years, and there is no district or building policy that directly contradicts that practice. During that time, no adult, including the adviser, other faculty members, administrators or publication boards have dictated or changed content.

In both situations, the advisers may, as part of the coaching process, offer advice and comment, but not make final content decisions.

* The policy can still limit unprotected speech such as libel, obscenity and substantially disruptive material, but it must give other content control to the students.

Help us show others that public forums in student media are not an endangered species.

John Bowen, MJE

It’s not often in the confines of my brain that the names Mary Beth Tinker and Marshall McLuhan bump into each other. However, after reading about the travails of the Palmer family in Texas though, the two ’60s luminaries kept cropping up in my thoughts.

I don’t know if Pete Palmer and his parents even know who Tinker is, but they’re channeling her spirit down in Waxahachie, Tx. I’m relieved there are students willing to fight for things they believe in.

The situation the Palmers found themselves in is so ludicrous it defies belief. No. No, it defies any sort of common sense. As an editor I used to work with used to say, the administrators down in Waxahachie “ain’t got no walkin’ round sense.”

Young Pete, it seems, had the temerity to wear a shirt displaying the highly inflammatory words “San Diego” emblazoned upon it. This was a clear violation of a dress code stating that students could only wear clothing that had no messages on them. No messages! So Pete was disciplined and his folks then sued the district, saying his First Amendment rights had been infringed upon.

Now, I understand bans on shirts bearing alcohol brands or sexist stuff, but I don’t really get how a shirt saying “San Diego” can be offensive. I hear it’s a beautiful place, with great weather and all. Their baseball team is atrocious, but I really don’t think the Padres were entering into the situation here. Perhaps the administrators were offended by the fact they weren’t in San Diego.

So how does McLuhan fit into this? Well, based on his most famous saying, is it possible for these kids to wear anything without conveying some sort of message?

The message Pete Palmer was conveyed through his t-shirt. His t-shirt is his medium. Since it’s a medium, it must have a message. Following that, can you just stop at t-shirts? My white button down oxford shirts have a Banana Republic logo on them. My Adidas shoes have the three stripes on them. Don’t even get me started on all the different things designers do to jeans these days.

So the question I must ask of the Waxahachie School District is this: Following McLuhan’s saying, is it acceptable to wear anything to school in Waxahachie?