Week #1 story selection

This is a new semester with a lot of new kids. We had to get going right away with a lot of student press law, ethics, and discussion of our roles in the school and community. I probably rushed through a lot of it, but I laid the ground work for our discussion the rest of the year.

Day #1: The students were asked to identify the words they associate with the following terms:

Objective---Local---Impactful---Ethical

As a class, we shared what those words meant and discussed being objective in journalism. We also watched a clip from the Daily Show that bemoaned false objectivity in reporters who perpetuate lies in order to look objective.

As homework, the students had to write a personal journalist mission statement using at least two of the words we had been discussing, specifically addressing the social role our media should play at our school.

Day #2: Press Law & Ethics (one 80 minute class did not do this justice, but it was an important opening discussion of their rights, some ethical considerations, and some legal boundaries they may not cross.

Sharing mission statements and discussion of our social role at the school. The students decide we have a social responsibility role to fulfill.

Some Student Mission Statements: (they still have a ways to go.)

-The Royal Page is a paper of truth, community, and significance. As a writer for this paper, it is my job to stay local relate the stories to my peers.

-I plan to confront national and regional issues and stories and make them hyper local. The stories we write should have a strong authorial voice, but remain objective.

Day #3: Brainstorm stories for deadline #6 in sections. Each section should select stories in the context the four words we put on the board and at least one story must help fulfill the social responsibility role.

Some story selections from each section

Feature- Diversity in places you don't expect it.

Variety- Valentine's day--safe, fun, and cheap things to do.

Op/Ed- People who handle pressure in positive ways.

News- Thefts and the consequences of it in our school.

Sports-How much money is spent on each athletic team including averages per person and where it comes from. (This has been a two month story with cooperation from the Athletic Director.)

C-spread- Racism at our school in the context of black history month celebrations.

BackPage- The things we carry. What students use and carry on a daily basis and how it may be harming them. (Overloaded backpacks, loud earphones & etc.)

Day #4: Your role as a reporter. Rules for interviewing and gathering information in a respectful, ethical manner.

At the end of week #1, (it was a four day week) it is clear to me that we still have a ways to go, and our discussion and application must be refined even more. The students understand the concept, but we must still work on filtering our story selection through that concept. I know it will take time to change the mindset of these students, but it will come with repetition.

A new way to talk about journalism at HHS.

I'm starting a new project in my newspaper class when the new term begins next week. We will make an effort to be something much more important to our community of students, teachers and parents by fulfilling the journalistic theory of social responsibility. We will use that term in our story selection and brainstorming and make an concerted effort to fulfill that role for our school in our final products.

I have taught for a long time that my newspaper students must tell the stories of our school, and they must use students at our school to localize bigger stories like the economy or teen issues. They do this pretty well. We have told stories of teen pregnancy in the context of teen mothers at our school; we have told the stories of war in the context of students who enroll in the army or alumni who graduate and are fighting in Afghanistan; we have told the struggles of coming out in the context of gay students at our school. But we have never done it with the conscious mind that we were fulfilling a role of social responsibility so much as we were telling interesting stories of the people at our school. Ultimately, we were fulfilling a social responsibility role by accident.

Starting next term, it will be part of the language of our class. What samples of social responsibility can we find in the mainstream media? in the emerging media? in the online media? What stories can we do at our school that make us relevant to the school. Yes, we need to report on trends and school plays and people doing really cool things, but what if each issue had to pass a social responsibility test? What if each section editor had to defend his or her story selection as being socially responsible? What if we talked about our c-spread in terms of social responsibility?

I think it would make a much more relevant product, online and in print, for our community. It would be harder to do, and it would take a lot more legwork, including some Freedom of Information requests, to do it right, but it would be an excellent way to frame what we do in our newspaper program.

I'll chronicle the project on this blog over the course of the next term. I'll update on what stories they select and how they defend their selection in terms of social responsibility, and I'll discuss the frustrations and successes the students have.