Innovation new and old, to fight prior review
by John Bowen, MJE
“A young man sitting on the steps reading a newspaper” by Will Breen on Unsplash.
It’s been nearly a year since Alexandria City Schools in Virginia began reviewing its student media policy, the Washington Post reported.
School officials did not like articles the student staff were beginning to cover and decided the policy had to have a face-lift.
Students complained, too, largely about the principal’s dual roles as head of the school and acting as “editor-in-chief” of the student publication. That hadn’t happened before, but their previous articles didn’t question such things as the safety of students going between school campuses to attend certain classes or other administrative changes.
So, adults listened as the team of adults and two teens presented their list of proposed ideas.
Students got to offer 12 ideas, including to eliminate the principal from his job as EIC.
None of their 12 were implemented, and the high school principal remained the Theogony “student” newspaper’s editor of their once open forum.
Alexandria student journalists joined others across the country, continuing to fight censorship and its fake journalism, prior review.
Washington Post reporter Karina Elwood wrote: “Since 2014, the district policy has designated the school principal as top ‘editor’ of publications…Students said the policy was not regularly enforced.”
Then they suspected it would be.
And they still wanted to change it.
Co-editors James Libresco and Casey Donahue worked with the Student Press Law Center on changes that would bring more student responsibility and remove the principal as editor.
Yet the school board left the principal in charge, and students published a scathing editorial.
“While they have certainly listened to our perspectives, their actions do not reflect that,” the staff wrote. “The policy proposed by the school district includes zero of the 12 elements we requested.”
Although not designed as high school or college texts, “Elements of Journalism” and “Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload,” by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, provide useful insight for student editors, too.
These two books offer ideas, resources and stories about how to handle some of these kinds of difficult situations students are facing more and more frequently.
“The elements of journalism we describe in this book are nothing more than a description of what society requires of those who produce the news,” they wrote as book’s the opening line.
When I used their books as texts for both scholastic and collegiate journalism classes, my students and I looked to see if and how “traditional” journalism standards fit with new tools and principles.
We looked at those principles most often cited in ethical codes. Which are most important, which are most controversial? Such things as “no personal opinion in news, features, and sports,” and even the most sacred “objectivity” were worth assessing and studying their analyses of them in “Elements” and “Blur.”
This gave the staffs ideas and background to create effective, workable models. This also worked in a master’s level class for journalism teachers.
For example, in chapter 1 of “Elements,” the authors used “journalist’s first obligation is to the truth.”
Once students grasp that first obligation to truth, then verification of the truth in journalistic reporting is easier to understand and mold to a journalistic situation. Suddenly students’ minds, their eyes and hearts engage to create tools that can make a difference in why, how and who cares reporting.
More ways to use the Kovach and Rosenstiel books (and time over the summer to prepare for fall?) will be included in the next and final blog on this site until August.
Written By: John Bowen, MJE