The Latest
Text of JEA letter to Stevenson admins, links to overall coverage
In response the ongoing prior review situation and restraint at Stevenson High in Lincolnshire, Illinois, JEA President Jack Kennedy recently sent school officials the following letter. Links to Chicago area coverage of the situation follow the letter: Dr. Twadell, I am a long-time admirer of Stevenson High School, having read numerous scholarly articles by faculty…
The 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…
Your responses essential to clarification of student press freedoms
One way or another, no matter where censorship of scholastic media is reported, we need you to respond to comments. All one has to do is to read the comment sections of of the Daily Herald and the Chicago Tribune, among others, to see the lack of understanding about the First Amendment and how it…
More reasons to be thankful for student journalism programs
On this Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful for how student journalism programs across this country prepare their graduates for real life. Districts cutting their journalism programs need to hear this story. This week I was visited by two former student editors. As a journalism adviser I know about the study “Journalism Kids Do Better” and…
Students forced to publish censored paper
Turkeys in the news tomorrow may not be just on people’s plates. Lately, some have been dressed as administrators at Stevenson High in Lincolnshire, Illinois. First, school officials’ objections held up the paper’s initial release. Then they forced journalism students to remove several stories and several pages from the latest issue. Next, administrators demanded the…
Stevenson HS journalists forced to print changed paper
Illinois: Stevenson HS student journalists forced to print administratively-changed paper Wednesday. http://tinyurl.com/yflw3mu
Fighting scholastic media censorship must start locally
They just keep on coming. Stevenson High. Timberland High. Stow-Munroe Falls High. Boonville High and others too numerous to list. And those are just some we know about. But there are countless others — the smaller, lesser known stories you hear about at workshops like the recent JEA/NSAP convention in DC. • Like the Virginia …
He said, she said, they said…
Sometimes it’s hard to know whom to believe. You hear a colleague talk about her students making all the content decisions, and then you have her kids in a workshop….and that’s not the way they tell it. You think you know who did all the work on that fantastic layout….and then someone tells you what…
Stevenson High School
What’s happening at Stevenson High School reminds me a lot of what happened at Hazelwood East High School in the 1980s. Controversial stories like the ones in the most recent issue of the Statesman at Stevenson, including one on teen pregnancy, also appeared in the Spectrum at Hazelwood East in 1983. Frank LoMonte, executive director…
Courage in journalism
As Frank LoMonte, director of the Student Press Law Center, was announcing the Courage in Journalism Award to two young men from Pennsylvania, I realized that they stood there because their adviser had taught them well about the First Amendment. These young men, Henry Rome (Journalism Education Association’s national Student Journalist of the Year for…
Open forums for student expression? Let us recognize you
If you and your students attended the JEA/NSPA convention this past week in DC, you are aware of the courageous fight some teachers and advisers wage against censorship. In some cases they kept their student media operating as designated forums for student expression or as practicing forums for student expression. Others still continue to fight…
DC: Truly inspiring
After the past couple of months of news on this blog, it would be easy to be despondent. Student work being censored for laughable reasons. Advisers having their authority usurped. Creativity being stifled. As it always does, the JEA/NSPA national convention, has energized me. Sitting in the SPRC panel on Saturday, we had the good…