The story has some good momentum

We are working at a story about the rise in fights at our school as our c-spread. We have given more time to this story than we usually allot to deadlines, and I think it is paying dividends.

So far, I know the students have talked to the following people: Dean of students, Police Liaison officer, Principal, star basketball student who helped break up a fight, teacher who helped break up a fight, hall monitors & students who have been suspended for fighting. I am happy with the net they have cast for reporting this story, but in the time before the final draft, I will encourage them to contact some people outside of our school that may be experts on student violence and the effects of it, as well as neighboring schools. These are all things they brainstormed.

They have already come up with some c-spread art, and they are working in a group of three to gather the information for the story. By next week, we should have a complete rough draft for review by the editors.

Now, in the category of not being socially responsible, I was contacted today by a teacher at our school who wanted to make sure that we "keep the view of what takes place in our school as positive as possible." Which I believe to be code for, "don't make my program look bad, even if people have some frustrations." My response to him is that we will be fair and verify our facts and quotes for accuracy.

Our big project

Our last issue has come out with little fanfare. We covered the issue of diversity at our school, and we have heard some rumblings that we got some information wrong, but no one has approached us yet, and I don't know what it is. Ultimately, we covered an issue that is important to our school because we have a changing demographic that has created some tensions.

Our big issue is coming up. We have seen many more fights this year at our school, and it is something my kids have been talking about, but it is now something we must cover. We can't avoid it anymore, especially after one of our hallway monitors resigned (supposedly) after the last fight. This is not going to be easy. Our school will not want to talk about it and call attention to the fights that happen in our school. We must make sure we talk to the right people and get the right information. Any errors will make us a target, and I know people will look for what we do wrong. We have to be on our game with this one, and it will be the most socially responsible story we tackle this year.

Our editorial board decided this would be our c-spread, so our cover and c-spread will need good art that does not sensationalize the issue, but rather adds context and depth to the discussion. We also spent the first thirty minutes of class on Wednesday casting a wide net as far as who we will need to talk to? The students were impressive. I asked them to write down what we needed to know to cover this story well. Who we needed to talk to. What the consequences were for doing it well, and what they were for doing it poorly, and most importantly, who we needed to talk to. Students that have been in the class for many years and students who had only been in the class for a few weeks were asking good questions that we needed to answer in the article and they created an impressive list of people to talk to. If they contact half of them, I'll be ecstatic.

I think several students were excited about writing this story, and we have several different angles we are pursuing. Our students want to know the story behind one of our hall monitors suddenly resigning, and they are contacting him and the principal to get a straight story. It may not come, but we are trying.

We will have about two weeks to work on this story, and we have already contacted the principal. I sat down with him briefly and laid out what the kids were doing, how we would do it, and why were doing it, and he said he would talk to my students and help them get the info they need. My students are scheduling an appointment with the principal. I hope to report that my kids have made contacts, gathered good info and are moving on the story next week.

Social Responsibility is becoming part of our daily dialogue

I don't think we are doing a very good job of applying it, but I am glad that we are talking about it.

When two of my strongest thinkers and writers provided milquetoast editorials last week, I urged them to do better. One of the editorials was about sometimes leaving the pressure behind and playing basketball or watching TV. The other was about settling or not chasing your dreams because they probably aren't achievable.

Could we be any more depressing? These are bright, motivated, smart kids, but these were not exactly stories that would have any real impact on our school community or tell them anything they hadn't thought about. I told them as such. I even used the term milquetoast and suffered the derision for the rest of the week.

What the discussion immediately turned to, though, was that the stories were not socially responsible. And it was the students who mentioned the term. They weren't applying the theory, but when I criticized their work, they did recognize, albeit tongue-in-cheek, their lack of social responsibility in their editorials.

We talked through what they could do differently, and they came in with revisions the next day, but I am still disappointed with the topics they chose. They have done better in the past, and they will do better next time because they will consider our discussion of how they fell short in being socially responsible. Our discussion, and my critiques, will be in the back of their minds when they next brainstorm, and they will do better.

My other disappointment is in the sports section. We have been working on a story regarding how money is spent on athletic teams, and what it costs to run each sport for the last two months. We have a reporter who has been meeting with the A.D. weekly and poring over the books, and it is an interesting story that will provide fresh information for our community. The sports editors chose to preempt it for another month in favor of 1200 word feature story about a teacher at our school who is a swimming coach for the paralympics. It is a great story, but we also ran a story on him last year, when he was actually coaching in china for the paralymipics. It is a good story, but the editors chose to run that one instead of the A.D. story. I think it was the wrong choice, but having student leaders means that sometimes they will make decisions you disagree with.

One good thing that may come from the editorial choice, though, is that we need to get more people in the athletic funding story. The reporter will be able to talk to coaches, player and parents, and he hasn't done that yet. This could end up being a much bigger story worthy of a full-page.

We are going to print on Monday. I will post a link to our website, and a pdf of our issue when it is live.

Struggles with the stories and some new ideas

We had our editing day today where the section editors read all of the stories, and I worked on photo editing with the new students. Most of my students were quite happy with the work that was being done this week. We have a lot of new students in the class, and it was hard to nurse their first stories, but hopefully many of them found success.

Of the stories we are covering this week with a special emphasis on the social responsibility role, we have made some good progress. These are the ones I am most excited about:

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.)

I read a rough draft of this story yesterday, and I sent the writer back to the Athletic Director to get some clarification. The A.D. has been surprisingly forthcoming with info. It will work out to be a great story, but it needed to be refocused. The reporter is focusing on the cost o playing sports at our school. Including what the athletic fees pay for, how much revenue each sport brings in, questions about sponsorships from athletic manufactures and how much it costs to run each sport. He found out that our state champion basketball team brings in the most revenue, but it costs $1,000 less to run our basketball program than it does to run our volleyball program. Sports are not funded based on their popularity or revenue generation; some of the sports that are least popular are the most expensive to run.

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

This is going to turn out to be one of our most powerful spreads we have done. The editor has a fantastic design and has written a 1,000 word story. We will go in depth with this issue instead of telling a bunch of smaller interesting pieces of info in sidebar format. This is an important story for our school with a growing minority population that previous staffs have tried to tackle rather immaturely. I am confident this staff will do it much better.

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.)

We have a lot of kids working on this story that are very interested in helping. This will focus on many things our kids use every day that have long term consequences for them. It has been pretty easy to get this, as it involved research and some readily available info. Still the reporter went to the nurse and a health teacher who is particularly concerned about student well-being to get some local context, and interviewed several students who are known to always wear headphones and carry heavy backpacks. The art for this page will be really good, and the editor has a history of doing really great, socially responsible things.

Next week, we'll be putting it all together, and my writers will be working on a new set of stories.