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Free expression and us album: Music, the First Amendment and textual analysis

Overview This project integrates knowledge of the First Amendment with students’ favorite form of entertainment: music. Students will critically analyze song lyrics and themes, connecting them to First Amendment rights. They will work in groups to create an “album” that teaches others about freedom of speech, press, religion, petition, and assembly, demonstrating their comprehension through…

12 ways to teach the 2024 election with The New York Times

The New York Times offers engaging, adaptable strategies to help educators explore the 2024 election with their students in meaningful ways, just in time for Constitution Day activities. The guide features 12 diverse teaching methods, encouraging students to reflect on their identities, understand the Electoral College, monitor misinformation, and follow political news. It also includes…

Artificial intelligence, the First Amendment and democracy

Overview This lesson explores the implications of artificial intelligence on the First Amendment, focusing on freedom of speech and the press. With AI technologies evolving rapidly, students will critically analyze how AI might influence public discourse, truth and accountability. Students will also explore the potential legal ramifications of AI-generated content and the challenges it poses…

Covering protests: Do’s and Don’ts of the biggest story this year

One of the biggest news stories this month is the protests on a growing number of college campuses. Not surprisingly, if these are near your school – or maybe even if they are not – your media staffs have considered covering them. They’re certainly newsworthy: timeliness, significance, in many cases proximity and maybe even some…

Does prior review have educational value?

Or, what students learn when they submit to prior review? From SPRC Vault 2 | Prior Review The last From the SPRC Vault focused on April Fools and other knowingly false and potentially dangerous publishing. It is potentially dangerous because it could lead to legal, ethical and negative situations that bring prior review, fear of negative public…

Ungagging your reporting is essential for transparency, accountability

Want to get your news consumers to read a story? Give them a good, no great, lede. A good lede will not only get them to read a story, but may very well captivate them as well. But this piece isn’t about lede writing. It’s from the Society of Professional Journalists’ update to its ongoing…

From the SPRC vaults

It’s that time of the year again. Potentially, a time for fools, wills and disasters instead of credibility. Issues raised often irk groups and individual alike. Others laugh and downplay the falsity. Created by the famous, everyday citizens and a few who want to be comedians, the spread of publishing such ideas and events challenge…

Tomorrow’s Nellie Bly may be working on student media today

Two high school students, participants in the Dow Jones News Fund workshop at Kent State University in 2001, interview each other for the first story they had to write. Getting an early start as a journalist was a big plus in for many women journalists, including Katie Couric, who interned at the all-news Washington, D.C. radio…

SJW: Celebrate & rejuvenate

Let the fireworks – figuratively or real – begin For now is the time of JEA’s Student Journalism Week and all it can do to further democratic ideals. For 100 years, JEA’s mission has been to support free and responsible scholastic journalism by providing resources and educational opportunities for students and advisers across the country….

Scholastic Journalism as the Fourth Estate

Student Journalists can play the role of District and Community Watchdogs New Jersey has launched multiple legislative initiatives designed to strengthen our democratic institutions. Consider the following bills signed into law in the last few years: Civics Education Expansion to Middle Schools (7/23/21): “By deepening civics instruction in middle school and high school, we are…

Class activities, lesson plan for Student Press Freedom Day

With little more than a month to plan, it’s time to think of the best way to celebrate Student Press Freedom Day, Feb. 22, 2024. For this sixth annual event, the Student Press Law Center announced its theme as “Powerfully Persistent.” Who best embodies that description?  And, yet,  who is most likely to have that action squashed?…

Best practices to shape AI, journalism union

Fifteen years ago Feb. 1, 2009, copyright education centered on online term papers. Back then, USA Today reported, as did SPRC’s blog, about a court case against a company accused selling term papers online without proving content ownership. A US district judge in Illinois ordered the owner of the web-based company to stop selling term papers…