“Old Media/New Tricks” is gathering predictions for media in 2010.  Using Twitter, the blog’s creators are urging 140-character tweets about what others see in the coming year.

They said their tweet would be:

2010 media predictions: More collaboration (soon with Wave), tablets on the rise, mobile strategies emerge, paywalls lose favor. #Media2010

I posted one:

My prediction for STUDENT media in 2010: More newsroom pros will step up & help us fight censorship. Or is that simply my hope? #Media2010

What would yours be? Respond to this blog but also post your own tweet using the #Media2010 hashtag.

JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Commission will meet Jan.5-7 at the Poynter Institute to work on and develop commission projects to  better serve members, their students and communities in terms of press rights and responsibilities.

Some of the topics commission members are considering are:

• Brainstorming and implementing a “blast outreach campaign” to students about their rights and responsibilities. Involves creating the materials and the delivery system. (Could be in parts for those involved in media and those not involved in media)

• Assembling a teaching module of questions to raise before censorship becomes an issue. (We already have ethical situations that can be worked into this)(Web/online-based)

• Seek input on 1-3 “ethical situations you wish you had answers to” using the listserv; Asking the question and compiling a way to make it available. Involves identifying the questions and creating the answers. Good resource could be Kelly McBride if she is to be there.

• A multimedia version of the wallet card concept: “Break Open in Case of Emergency” and develop and create it at Poynter.

• Create an outreach package to commercial journalists urging them to become involved with blog and/or information to scholastic journalists. Materials and package.

• Create a package to ask advisers “What questions do you ask when trying to get students to act ethically.” This could be commission produced and come from a listserv survey; compiled and prepared for distribution.

We would also like your input. What might you want us to develop that would best meet your needs?  Candace talked about sites to find lessons, activities and situations yesterday, but could we develop other projects to directly help you?

Let us know

Just relaxing and avoiding work is a good way to spend winter break, but, with the new semester not far off, maybe a little time can go into getting lesson plans in order. Why not explore some of the wealth of online materials available?

Particularly if it’s a new group of students and a new course, starting out with legal and ethical training is vital. So…here’s a belated holiday gift: Links to some sites with a wide range of teaching materials, from discussion-starters to entire units. Browse for now and bookmark for later.

• Of course the JEA Scholastic Press Rights Commission has plenty on its Web site, everything from podcasts to PowerPoints to 5-minute lessons to start a class thinking. Most of these are in the “teaching materials” link.
• The Student Press Law Center has an amazing array of Media Law Presentations.  These cover copyright, libel and more, and each has a PowerPoint with teachers’ presentation notes.
• If you’re not familiar with the American Society of News Editors High School Journalism Initiative site, you should be. In the archived lesson plans its summer institute teachers create are a number concerning legal and ethical issues.
• NAA Foundation supports youth journalism in many ways, including funding vital research.  The Newspaper in Education (NIE) section of the Web site includes lesson plans for many levels and a variety of courses. “First Things First: Using the Newspaper to Teach the Five Freedoms of the First Amendment” is one good example.
• The First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and in Washington, D.C.,  has as part of its Web site “Education for Freedom: Lesson Plans for Teaching the First Amendment.” These, too, work for various age levels, and all focus on the importance of those 45 words added to our Constitution.
• Want something a little more interactive? Something students might do on their own? Try News University, part of The Poynter Institute for Media Studies. With a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, NewsU offers online training for newsroom journalists and classroom ones, too. Check out the large range of (mostly) free, interactive courses. For our purposes here, consider “Introduction to Ethical Decision-making,” but the course list probably has others of interest as well.

No one wants to spend the holidays focused on school. BUT no one wants to come back after vacation, scrambling to find good materials to use.  A little time browsing now can make a lot of difference later in January.

Happy New Year!

Candace Perkins Bowen, MJE

Dennis Byrne is clipping folks again in his Barbershop at ChicagoNow. Here is a link to his latest comments on Hazlewood and Stevenson High.

Anyone wanting to give Byrne an intelligent discussion on the impact of Hazelwood as a Christmas gift please do.

Maybe we can open his eyes – and his mind – to other points of view.

In the ongoing saga that is the battle over Stevenson High (IL) journalism program, The Daily Herald recently editorially called for an intervention session. An IEP of sorts to plan protocols to heal the damaged relationship between school and students.

The online Merriam-Webster definition of a protocol: a code prescribing strict adherence to correct etiquette and precedence or a set of conventions governing the treatment  of data in an online communications system. I like process instead, but the definition is not the key.

Its substance is.

Such a protocol is, and has been, the goal of Illinois Journalism Education Association (JEA) state director Randy Swikle, the McCormick Freedom Project and the Illinois Press Foundation. In fact, a conference to attempt such protocols is planned for February.

Assuming the conference can succeed at what many, many others have tried (and we do want it to succeed for all journalism programs facing censorship) what would you see as the core  items in a protocol? If you and your students face censorship or prior review, what is the key concept or principle or action you think ought to be at the heart of a workable protocol? If you are review free, what is the core of that freedom others need to know about?

For me, such a protocol would have to answer key questions:
• How do we commonly define responsibility, as in free and responsible journalism?
• Whether we can reach an understanding on prior review and why it has no valid educational purpose
• Can we convince all involved that journalistic values match and precisely serve the best of a system’s educational mission statements?
• The words civility or respect are often bandied about. Can all sides really respect each other’s positions?

We would love to hear from you and how you envision a protocol that enables all parties to work out a sound educational solution.

Building off of John’s previous post, tattoos continue to be the scourge of Wentzville, Mo.

Yesterday, after receiving approval from principal and The Wolf’s Howl had been distributed during fifth hour, administrators of the Wentzville School District pulled the paper from circulation.

The offending item this time was again, a tattoo. On a spread about cancer – sorry for the lack of details – there was evidently a photo of a cancer patient who had a small tattoo.The horror … the horror.

It appears that the administrators in Wentzville are attempting to give their counterparts at Stevenson High School a run for their money in the most ridiculous reason to censor a paper contest.

These two schools continue to distinguish themselves in ways that are unfortunately getting a lot of recognition. Stevenson, as it was pointed out by JEA president Jack Kennedy in a letter to the Stevenson administrators, is a nationally recognized model school. Unfortunately in these cases, Stevenson is becoming the model of what not to do when it comes to supporting students, the First Amendment or the educational process. Let’s hope that other administrators and school districts are not paying attention to what these districts are doing, because it could be the start of a very small snowball that is rolling down the hill … its momentum needs to be stopped before this becomes a much bigger problem.

According to Lincolnshire, Il, Board of Education president Bruce Lubin at a board of education meeting Dec. 17, the Statesman, a focal point of censorship issues over the last two years, is not a public forum but rather “an educational and curriculum endeavor.”

The whole statement can be found at Stevenson High’s Web site.

The board clams “informal” review has taken place for years in the statement. The statement also cited Hazelwood as rationale for the board to “impose restrictions on a newspaper of this type, provided that their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns.”

Stevenson officials today censored another story, this one on student use of prescription drugs and using named sources. The school cited its responsibility not to publish private student information even though the student had given reporters permission to use the name.

Still, the board’s statement sees only positives over the controversy.

“The current questions surrounding the Statesman have had at least one positive result,” the board statement continued. “While Stevenson has had an informal practice of pre-publication prior review for the Statesman for years, recent events have enabled the administration, faculty, and student journalists to have conversations that have provided more focus and are leading to the development of more specific procedures and practices for providing feedback and suggestions to our journalism students. Within the next month, our administration, journalism teachers, and students will be working collaboratively to draft clear procedures and guidelines to improve communication and provide our students with clear expectations for their work in the journalism program.”

Student editors have repeatedly said said they are being forced away from responsible journalism and learning.

According to the Chicago BreakingNewsCenter, editor Pam Selman said at last night’s meeting, “The worst part about it all is that (the censorship) is not just unlawful – it’s bad teaching and bad journalism. The fact that we are students does not deprive us of our rights as journalists working on a limited public forum to be free from unreasonable restraint.”

The board now argues the Statesman is not a public forum.

At any rate, the board’s statement continues the puzzle that is Stevenson High. The board reiterates its belief it is an exemplary learning community. Journalism students, meanwhile, only learn more about restraint and review even though their course description presents the following:

Journalism: Newspaper Production (Accelerated )

ENG951-Semester 1, ENG952-Semester 2

Open to 10-11-12 Full Year

Prerequisite: Journalistic Writing

Students do all the work necessary to produce the school newspaper, the Statesman. Staff positions include managing editors, copy editor, design editor, advertising manager, photo manager, page editors (news, opinions, sports, in-depth and feature), reporter and photographer. Staff members gather news, research and write copy, and help complete pages. Students who hope to be photographers are encouraged to take a photography course through the Art Department. Because this is a student publication, all responsibilities, from the planning of the content to the design of an issue to the processing of photos and the completion of pages, are handled by students. Afterschool work is necessary to the completion of each issue. This course may be taken more than once for credit. While students are welcome to enroll if they meet the prerequisite, they must complete the interview and application process in the spring to be considered for admission.

Collaboration, so far, seems very one-sided and directive.

And, as seen in this college editor’s column, Stevenson is not the only school changing the playing field. Additionally, censorship continues at Timberland High in Wentzville, Missouri.

For additional stories, see the Chicago BreakingNewsCenter story. Read the Daily Herald story.

Let’s play Devil’s Advocate.

Let’s start with the premise that scholastic media’s use of Twitter can cause confusion. Confusion about which Tweets are opinion and which are legitimate news.

And sometimes, because of current practices, audiences cannot tell the difference.

Why?

Because the simple addition of an exclamation point at the end of 140 characters or the urging “Go see” without a source compromises the information as news.

So, the press rights commission will discuss this statement as part of a set of guidelines for online ethics and social media:  We believe journalists and news organizations should understand the necessity of defining, and clearly labeling, news and opinion. In an open environment like the Web, consistency in presentation can help the reader see clearly where the lines are drawn between news and opinion. Whenever journalists or organizations blur or blend those roles, they need to recognize the peril and weigh the consequences.

What do you think? Add your voice to the discussion.

For now, at least, school officials lost another round in the battle over punishing students for outside school use of the Internet and “Cyberbullying.”

According in an article in the Los Angeles Times, A California federal judge said a middle school had gone too far in punishing a student for immature and hurtful comments.

“To allow the school to cast this wide a net and suspend a student simply because another student takes offense to their speech, without any evidence that such speech caused a substantial disruption of the school’s activities, runs afoul” of the law, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson wrote in a 60-page opinion, according to the Times article.

The article summarized several other decisions and cases. The article also reported the school district has appealed the decision.

By Randy Swikle
The censorship controversy at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill., shows the challenges facing those who believe in cultivating free and responsible student news media in public schools.

That’s free as in student empowerment within the parameters set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Tinker v. Des Moines Board of Education.

That’s responsible as in commitment to journalism ethics and self-awareness that student journalists are custodians, not owners, of their news medium. They have an inherent obligation in decision-making to consider the values of the school community, the tenets of the school mission, the pedagogic concerns of school officials, and the best interests of readers/listeners/viewers.

The censorship of The Statesman, a national award-winning student newspaper, shows deficiencies that contribute to distrust, alienation, hostility and other attitudes that are counterproductive to a positive learning culture.

Among the deficiencies:

(1) Lack of understanding of scholastic press law. Stevenson administrators suggest that since the student newspaper is a curricular activity, school officials may arbitrarily regulate its content. In fact, because the paper functions as a public forum, officials are constrained to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Tinker parameters, which narrow reasons for justifiable administrator intervention. Administrators further justified censorship with the argument they were acting in loco parentis. In fact, in Morse v. Frederick, justices wrote, “When public school authorities regulate student speech, they act as agents of the State; they do not stand in the shoes of the students’ parents. It is dangerous fiction to pretend that parents simply delegate their authority—including their authority to determine what their children may say and hear—to public school authorities.” By forcing students to publish their “administratively revised” newspaper, by not allowing students to withhold their bylines and by refusing to allow a blank space or editorial protesting censorship, school authorities have put themselves in a precarious legal position.

(2) Determination to mandate rather than inspire ethics. Stevenson administrators censored a story containing admissions of two unnamed members of the National Honor Society who said they violated the Student Code of Conduct. The use of unnamed sources is an ethical decision that should be made by students, not forced upon them by administrators serving as government agents.

(3) Use of clout instead of collaboration. Censorship originating from a four-person, prior review panel, absent student input, is reactive rather than proactive oversight strategy that alienates learners and teaches obedience instead of responsibility.

(4) Slanted account of censorship issues. Official statements about the censorship controversy have been disseminated by the school’s public relations spokesperson and have been ambiguous, misleading, inaccurate and biased.

(5) Lack of accountability. By refusing to submit to questions in a public forum, school administrators and journalism advisers elude accountability for the censorship actions they have taken.

(6) More concern about “being right” than “doing right.” The professional news media, journalism educators, journalism organizations, parents and others have strongly protested the censorship by Stevenson administrators, yet there has been no evidence of conciliation on the part of administrators. The failure by administrators to effectively resolve the censorship controversy has put the student newspaper and journalism program in jeopardy, has compromised the welfare of learners and has raised serious questions about the culture of learning at Stevenson High School.

Finally, the way to cultivate a free and responsible student press is to engage in democratic education. To be authoritative but not authoritarian. To respect students as partners rather than mere subordinates. To achieve a PROPER BALANCE of structure and freedom.