Coppell High journalism students face a future they will be writing | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Arlington News
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12/29/10 3:25 PM
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Coppell High journalism students face a future they will be writing 12:00 AM CST on Sunday, December 26, 2010
By AVI SELK / The Dallas Morning News aselk@dallasnews.com
COPPELL The sight might warm the heart of a dormant printing press, soothe a downsized reporter's troubled dreams. As news outlets across the country shrink or shutter, 62 freshmen at Coppell High School are discussing media ethics in English class, editing news clips after lunch and traveling the halls with school-issued "press passes." The affluent city's high school expanded its journalism program into a four-year academy this year, which may seem bold as daily newspaper circulations slip to 1950s-era lows. But Irma Kennedy , the academy's director and COURTNEY video-journalism teacher, wasn't surprised when the PERRY/DMN district gave the program the green light. Coppell High freshman Maddie Iniestra tried her "We had support from the very beginning," she said. hand at editing video "The machine was moving in that direction." during an Intro to Mass Media Class. At a time While the academy seems to be one of a kind in when uncertainty Texas, it points to a countercurrent beneath the COURTNEY surrounds media roiling journalism industry: Even as the Internet age enterprises, the school PERRY/DMN and weak economy have upended traditional news Brandi LeBlanc led boldly offers a four-year journalism students in a models, more Texas students have been enrolling in journalism program. discussion about ethics in journalism classes than at any point in the past her marketing/advertising decade. class at Coppell High School earlier this month. Uncertainty abounds. The school hopes its Emerging Media and Communications Academy will eventually enroll about 100 students each year, preparing many for the news industry before they graduate. But neither the students nor their teachers know exactly what the profession will look like by the time these http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/denton/stories/DN-emac_26wes.ART.East.Edition1.14880ad.html
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Coppell High journalism students face a future they will be writing | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Arlington News
12/29/10 3:25 PM
aspiring journalists leave high school. Novel approach In ninth-grade geography class, as their mainstream peers methodically progressed through the continents, the journalism students were reading a post-apocalyptic novel about children forced to fight to the death on live television. Afterwards, they hopped on the news sites to look for wars or natural disasters that might lead to such a scenario. In English class, the children watched former Vice President Al Gore wax ecological in the global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth. They weren't studying ice floes – they were looking for media bias. "I want them to have also pulled out that this is a very anti-George Bush piece," whispered teacher Clara Caussey from the back of the classroom. Besides the school's four journalism teachers – one each for video, print, photography and advertising – core-subject teachers like Caussey have rewritten their curriculum for the academy's students, whom they expect to be teaching exclusively as the program fills up in future years. Survival skills Some classes are technical, blending traditional reporting skills like interviewing with training in videoediting software, digital cameras and eventually blogs and Web news – high-tech survival skills for a profession that is constantly changing. But many lessons, like the apocalypse assignment, are designed to broaden the teenagers' world view, forcing them to think outside the "Coppell bubble," as Kennedy phrases it. She hopes the program will have an impact even on students who don't end up going into journalism. "I'd love to say 'How wonderful if they could all be journalists,' but that won't happen," she said. "But it'll be OK, and hopefully they'll change the world around us." The students, meanwhile, are learning that the world is already changing around them. Trade in turmoil "I'm worried there's not going to be a newspaper in 10 years," said 15-year-old Madison Weaver, who has been determined to become a reporter since she watched Barbara Walters on ABC World News as a small girl. "Journalism is just my thing," she said. "I just love, love writing, and I'm not interested in anything else." Like many students in the program, Madison knows her chosen trade is in turmoil, though her teachers tend to frame it as a transformation. "It's a big transition," said John Loop, 15. "You see some small or large newspapers are going out, and everything is going online."
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Coppell High journalism students face a future they will be writing | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Arlington News
12/29/10 3:25 PM
An aspiring sports reporter, John still fights with his dad for the morning newspaper. But he can read the writing on the wall. "I don't want to be, like, offensive or anything," John said. "I feel like those jobs are opening so that I could have a job there." Even before it became an academy, Coppell's journalism program was an exception. Bucking the trend The school has long staffed four journalism teachers. Many others make do with one, if that. The student newspaper, The Sidekick, placed seventh at a national convention last year. Its TV station, KCBY, and its website both won awards from the Student Television Network this fall. The journalism academy is the school's third. The first academy, for science, technology, engineering and math, opened last year on the theory that students learn better in small, flexible environments. Kennedy said the already-popular journalism program was a natural fit. While journalism students in Texas are growing – about 14 percent more public-school students enrolled in classes last year than a decade before, according to the Texas Education Agency – the state may be an anomaly. Anecdotal reports from journalism teachers around the country indicate many school programs have seen cutbacks that would look familiar in many a newsroom. Coppell's academy has few precedents. Officials with the Texas Association of Journalism Educators and the national Journalism Education Association knew of none like it. Familiar concept But the concept is familiar to Steve O'Donoghue, who in 1985 helped found the Media Academy out of a high-school journalism program in Oakland, Calif. In stark contrast to Coppell, the Oakland academy, which has since grown into Media College Preparatory High School, was "100 percent minority," O'Donoghue said. It used journalism as "a hook" to lower dropout rates among at-risk students. "If you step back, forget about journalism for a second," he said. "The majority of kids who go into [vocational] programs don't go into that career. It's the skills they pick up that are valuable, not necessarily the profession."
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