April 2008 Stet by MIPAMSU

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Michigan Interscholastic Press Association April 2008 Vol. 35, No. 2 www.mipa.jrn.msu.edu

Inside Student studies Constitution

3 MIPA judging day photos

6 Get your students to enter a MIPA essay contest

Photo by Josh Polito, Southfield HS, First Place in News/Feature Photo in 2007 Individual Newspaper Contest, Division 1. The photo was printed in The Southfield Jay, with the following cutline: “No contract: Sarah Scott, a high school cook, expresses her opinion at an informational picket outside of Southfield High School.” Josh’s adviser is Diane Hofsess.

Stet The President’s Column

State curriculum flawed

T Rod Satterthwaite Dexter HS

he Michigan Merit Curriculum is seriously flawed. But it didn’t have to be this way. A glimpse into the journalism classroom could show every politic an and bureaucrat in the state how to “fix” education. There’s certainly no denying high schools need to change. The structure of the day, the way information is delivered and even the number of days students are in school are drastically similar to the way high school was 100 years ago. And a few things have changed in 100 years. One thing that has not changed, though, is what teenagers need from schools in order to help them become successful adults. They need to know someone cares about them and respects their voice. They need to know how what they are learning relates to them and the world around them. And they need to know they are being challenged and prepared for the future. And the good news for us is, more than in any other course, all of these things are accomplished in the journalism classroom every day. Unfortunately, the new state high school standards adopted as part of the Michigan Merit Curriculum do nothing but try to make

everyone the same. And this invariably means a drift to the middle, not a rise above. Already in many classrooms we find it difficult to challenge the good students enough because if we do, we lose struggling students. We don’t spend enough time helping struggling students because if we do, we bore our good students. So we find a soft middle to teach to. The smart students get bored, the slow students get left behind and everyone else complacently grubs for grades. The sad thing is, it would have been easy for state officials to get it right if they would have just observed journalism teachers in action. And if they would have taken this simple step, here’s what they would have seen: ■ Dedicated teachers working to give students a voice in the system. Young people need to know they matter if they are ever going to grow in to successful adults. They need to know they have some control over what happens to them and that adults respect them and their ideas. No, students are not content experts. And education isn’t a democracy where students can vote

MIPA Officers 2007-2008

About Stet

President, Rod Satterthwaite, Dexter HS 1st Vice President, Jeremy Van Hof, Grand Ledge HS 2nd Vice President, C.E. Sikkenga, Grand Haven HS Secretary, Kim Kozian, L’Anse Creuse HS North Treasurer, Brian Wilson, Waterford Kettering HS Trustee, Paula Pantano, Stevenson HS Trustee, Tim Morley, Inland Lakes HS Trustee, Sue Spalding, Quincy HS Newspaper Chair, Julie Price, Haslett HS Yearbook Chair, Lynn Strause, East Lansing HS Broadcast Chair, Diane Herder, Laingsburg HS Legislative Chair, Gloria Olman, retired, Utica HS Workshop Chair, Betsy Pollard Rau, H.H. Dow HS Middle School Chair, Jenny Birmelin, Orchard Lake MS Hall of Fame Chair, Jeff Nardone, Grosse Pointe South HS Executive Director, Cheryl Pell, Michigan State University MIPA Office, Amy Brandt & Jon Vereecke, MSU students

Stet is the official newsletter of the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association, an agency of the School of Journalism at Michigan State University. Stet is published four times a year by the MIPA executive director and MSU students.

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Send letters to the editor and advertising inquiries to mipa@msu.edu. The MIPA Web site is maintained by Cheryl Pell. Web site: www.mipa.jrn.msu.edu MIPA 305 Communication Arts Building Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824-1212 Phone: (517) 353-6761 Fax: (517) 355-7710

on what to learn or not to learn. But students can and should be given more choices as to what they want to learn and how to show their learning. The success, in our journalism classrooms, of the students other teachers have given up on should say it all. Requiring everyone to take the same subjects at the same time ignores the fact that each of our students is a unique individual with unique educational needs. A fact journalism teachers use to their advantage every day. ■ Learning intimately connected to the world beyond high school. What students don’t need is more of the same, especially if more of the same ain’t working. What they need is more real-world experiences that help them connect to a field they are interested in and see how the skills they are learning in high school relate to the world beyond high school. The journalism classroom is a model of this type of relevance. Students are producing a concrete product for an audience of critical

See President, page 3

MIPA Calendar April 21, 2008 Spring Conference May 6, 2008 MIPA North Conference in Traverse City July 15, 2008 Deadline for yearbooks and literary magazines for Spartan Contest July 21–Aug. 1, 2008 School of Journalism adviser courses in East Lansing Aug. 3–7, 2008 MIPA/MSU Summer Journalism Workshop in East Lansing Oct. 23, 2008 MIPA Fall Conference

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Lansing student participates in Constitution project Lansing Everett HS student Viviana Arcia was chosen to be one of 30 high school journalists to participate in the National Constitution Center 2008 Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution. She was accompanied by her adviser, Chad Sanders. She spent the weekend with students from across the country discussing the Constitution with top scholars and journalists. Her small group studied a 4th Amendment case that was recently in front of the Supreme Court. Students and advisers spent most of their time in sessions at the National Constitution Center, but also saw a moot court held in the US Court building. Arcia was chosen for the Fellowship based on her writing samples, as well as an essay on the Constitution. In her essay, she explained her Cuban father’s prison sentence for reading newspapers and listening to radio not sanctioned by the government, and his view of the US Constitution and the freedom it provides. Arcia came the US with her father and mother when she was six years old.

Photos by Chad Sanders

TOP Viviana Arcia, top, left, a junior at Lansing Everett HS, talks with other student journalists, professionals journalists, and Akil Reed Amar, constitutional law professor at Yale Law School about a fourth amendment supreme court case. LEFT Arcia, left, listens to Lynn Sherr, ABC News 20/20 correspondent, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Sherrilyn Iffil, a University of Maryland law professor and nationally-recognized civil rights advocate. They were discussing “Women In Law”, which will air on C-SPAN.

PRESIDENT, cont. from page 2 consumers and learning the same skills as the pros. Whether you’re teaching students writing, photography, design, advertising or interviewing skills, you are giving them skills they can use no matter what they choose as a career. Can the same be said for AP Calculus? ■ A focus on how subject matter will help make students contributing members of our rapidly changing, global society. Does your ACT score currently affect your life in some

significant way? Does your boss know your MEAP score? Do you even remember your high school GPA? So why, except for the fact that it’s politically expedient, do politicians and bureaucrat put so much importance on these ultimately insignificant numbers? Instead of focusing on numbers and scores, good schools should work like the journalism classroom where students learn about the world around them as they work to show their audience why they should care about these issues.

The journalism classroom is the place where the “traditional” student can work alongside the “alternative” student, each sharing, each learning from the other. The journalism classroom is the place where students are personally acquainted with how mass media is shaping their world. The journalism classroom is the place where students can work as agents of change in their school, test scores be damned. Ultimately, to improve high school education in Michigan, we need the rest of the education-

al world to come to us. Every day in the journalism classroom we give our students flexibility and help in finding their passion. We show them that we care about them and value their opinions. And we work to show them that what they are learning is relevant to becoming a successful adult. Unfortunately, Michigan’s new high school standards don’t address any of these issues. But it would have been so easy to. Like most other problems in the world, the situation could have been easily solved by asking a journalism teacher. April 2008 ■ 3

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IN MY

OPINION

By Jenny Toland, Michigan State journalism senior

Many instances of plagiarism shocking to college journalist For some reason, journalists have a bad rap in American society. Be it the reputation of being “pesky reporters,” photo manipulators or simply just people that have no regard for the truth, journalism often isn’t the most respected field to go into. Throughout the past six or more years of my life, journalism has been my passion. It started in high school when I worked for my high school newspaper for all four years of high school, and once I came to college almost immediately started working for Michigan State University’s student newspaper, The State News. Being involved in day-to-day journalism for so long I’ve experienced a lot of the high points of being a journalist: elections, college sports and even riots at MSU. Before becoming a managementlevel editor at The State News, I never understood the bad reputation journalists had. Because I personally had a strong set of ethics, I naively thought everyone around me—be it in classes or at work—also did. Soon I started to see a lot of something I never imagined I would: plagiarism. MIPA defines plagiarism as “This is not a legal issue but refers to the ethical situation of passing off someone else’s work as your own. That might be as unintentional as failing to attribute a quote to its source or as deliberate as submitting to a student publication a movie review downloaded from the web.” One part of this definition I find interesting is that it points out that plagiarism can be unintentional. It’s not always as obvious as someone using an entire article downloaded from the internet, or taken from

another newspaper or magazine. More times than not, it is stealing someone’s ideas, which is just as bad. Taking someone else’s work, be it ideas, quotes gathered, photos, or designs is wrong no matter what. There is no wrong in getting ideas and inspiration triggered from someone else’s work, that’s something all journalists do. It’s not like we can walk around and not be influenced by the things around us, but what we have to do is make it our own. At The State News, stealing ideas was by far the biggest incidence of plagiarism. In once instance, we had to fire the opinion writer because she was writing columns with the exact ideas of many nationally published articles. There would’ve been no problem with this had she worked to develop her own points and ideas relating to this opinion, but she didn’t. Although she put (some of it) into her own words, it was still plagiarism. Other instances of plagiarism at The State News include a reporter taking quotes from Hillary Clinton from Time Magazine and putting them in her article, copying page designs and using almost an entire press release, word-for-word, in a new brief. These are just some of the most memorable episodes, however. Every semester that I worked there, at least one person was fired for plagiarizing, which shocked me. Doesn’t it seem that by the time journalists reach a college publication they should understand plagiarism? Now plagiarism is bad enough, but taking to a whole new level is usingplagiarized material in contest entries. See IN MY OPINION, page 5

Have an opinion about a scholastic journalism topic? How about writing a column for this space? Your deadline is May 1! E-mail mipa@msu.edu.

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MIPA’s Plagiarism Policy From the MIPA handbook: Plagiarism — This is not a legal issue but refers to the situation of passing off someone else’s work as your own. That might be as unintentional as failing to attribute a quote to its source or as deliberate as submitting to a student publication a movie review downloaded from the web. Because of codes of ethics for professional and scholastic press associations alike emphasize the need for journalists to be fair and honest in their reporting, we have no room for any hints of plagiarism in publications. However, student media is a learning experience. For that reason, this scholastic press association adheres to the following policy: Plagiarism & MIPA Contests In an individual category contest, if a judge finds evidence of plagiarism in an entry, he or she will disqualify it if the copied material is extensive or may reduce the rating/ranking with an explanation noted if the material represents such problems as failure to attribute information. In the Spartan contest, if the staff reports plagiarism when the publication is submitted for the critique/contest and indicates how the staff handled its discovery in an educationally positive way, the judge should ignore the specific plagiarized material and rate the publication as if it did not exist. The staff should write a separate letter and label it “violation report.” In the Spartan contest, if the staff does not find or report plagiarism, but the judge finds evidence of it, the judge needs to deduct a substantial number of points and explain, with specific references, what the problem was. Judges should be clear in this description but non-offensive with comments. Generally the discovery of plagiarism is embarrassing to both staff and adviser, and it is enough to identify it. It’s not necessary to preach. ** If discovery is made after the award is presented, the MIPA board will deal with each case at its next regularly scheduled board meeting. * From The Student Media Guide to Copyright Law, © 1998 Student Press Law Center. The SPLC Web site, http://www.splc.org, has a more thorough explanation. ** Adapted from Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s “Just for Judges Handbook,” 1983 and revised periodically by Edmund Sullivan, executive director.

In my opinion, cont. from page 4 This may be as simple as entering something with stock photos and not attributing them, but that is still wrong. This is sad because if that plagiarized material happens to go undetected and wins a prize, that’s taking a prize away from someone who did all of the work themselves and worked much harder and longer. Thankfully, MIPA has a strict policy on this issue. It says, “In the individual category contest, if a judge finds evidence of plagiarism in an entry, he or she will disqualify it if the copied material is extensive or may reduce the rating/ranking with an explanation noted if the material represents such problems as failure to attribute information.” I’m glad that MIPA has a poli-

cy on plagiarism because it’s teaching the youngest journalists that plagiarism is not OK and won’t be tolerated in the real world. But I wonder how many students who participate in MIPA conferences know about that policy and what it means. That’s where teachers come in. Teach your students about plagiarism as much as you can. Who knows, maybe you can create a new generation of journalists who don’t get such a bad rap. For some reason, journalists have a bad rap in American society. Be it the reputation of being “pesky reporters,” photo manipulators or simply just people that have no regard for the truth, journalism often isn’t the most respected field to go into.

Other Organization’s Plagiarism definitions and policies From the Student Press Law Center: Plagiarism is not a legal term. It is a term for an academic crime, usually defined by professional or academic bodies. Simply stated, a plagiarist is a person who poses as the creator of words, ideas or methods that are not his own. In contrast, a person infringes on another’s copyright when he makes unauthorized use of material that is protected by copyright. For example, a person could plagiarize Shakespeare’s works by not giving the Bard proper credit. He would not, however, be guilty of copyright infringement because all of Shakespeare’s works, now about 400 years old, are in the public domain and cannot be protected by copyright. You will not be punished by a court of law if you are found guilty of plagiarizing someone else’s work, but you might be subject to punishment or censure by your publication staff. And you should certainly be embarrassed.

From the Online Journalism Review: No plagiarism By now, you’ve likely discovered that writing is hard work. You certainly don’t want someone else swiping your effort and presenting it as his or her own. So don’t steal others’ work. Such theft is plagiarism. It includes not just cutting and pasting whole articles, but copying photos, graphics, video and even large text excerpts from others and putting them on your web page as well. If you want to reference something on another website, link it instead. If you are concerned that the page you’re linking to will disappear, give your readers the name of the publication that published the page, its date of publication and a short summary of its content. Just like news reporters used to reference other content before the Web. (“In a Sept. 20 report, the Wall Street Journal reported....”).

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NEWS

Nardone wins Gold Key award “Tower” newspaper adviser Jeff Nardone was awarded a Gold Key from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) on Friday, March 21, in New York City. The award was presented to him by Kathy Zwiebel, who is the chair of the CSPA Honors Committee, and Edmund Sullivan, CSPA executive director.

Up north conference planned MIPA is taking its show on the road. Teachers and students in northern Michigan have been invited to a MIPA conference on Tuesday, May 6. The event will be held at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City. The event, a mini-version of MIPA’s fall conference, will offer a keynote session and then three break-out sessions. Speakers will be board members Betsy Rau, Lynn Strause, Rod Satterthwaite and Tim Morley. Other speakers include Jody Mackey and Missi Yeomans, Traverse City advisers. Roxanne Zell from East Jordan HS and Grant Parsons, a local attorney, will talk about students’ First Amendment rights. Lindsey VanHulle, a reporter at the Traverse City RecordEagle, will present two sessions as well. VanHulle is a former MIPA member and recent journalism grad from MSU. One lucky student will win a full scholarship to the MIPA Summer Journalism Workshop Aug. 3-7.

Send your students to the MIPA Summer Journalism Workshop Aug. 3-7. Download the brochure at www.mipa.jrn.msu.edu. April 2008 ■ 5

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JudgingDay

Judging for the 2008 MIPA contest exceeds one judge’s expectations By Michelle Fulton As teachers, we spend enormous amounts of time hiding behind stacks and stacks of papers in need of grading. We read and we read in an effort to evaluate, critique, and hopefully improve student writing. So it made me wonder when I was asked to help judge this year’s MIPA contest: why on earth would any of us volunteer to grade even more, especially on an otherwise sunny winter Saturday? This year, I was asked to help judge entries at MIPA’s 2008 Contest as part of an independent study I am enduring with Cheryl Pell as my mentor, the mastermind behind so many MIPA events. I had no idea what to expect. All I knew was that I had four other stacks of papers waiting for me at home, and although I was looking forward to this new experience, I was anxious about the amount of work it was going to require. Little did I know that I would enjoy myself more than I could have imagined. The day started with the good things in life: coffee and bagels. Teachers, Michigan State students, and other professionals mingled, and although I knew but a handful of people, I was immediately put at ease. Why was I ever worried? This was going to be a good day. Instructions were given and people were divided up: yearbook judges there, newspaper judges here, and so on. I was a newspaper judge. I did not know exactly what this meant, but I was up for the challenge. It was 9:00 a.m. and I was ready! My partner, Sue Spalding, was a teacher from Quincy HS, and had judged for this MIPA contest for many years. She was approachable and kind, and I felt completely comfortable asking her questions about what was expected of me. Guided by a rubric and explanation of the categories, we dived right into our stack of five categorized submis6 ■ April 2008

Video judges listen to directions as they work their way through the 231 videos from 22 schools. Ike Lea, professor at Lansing Community College, and Darcy Greene, professor at MSU, judged nearly all of the photography in the newspaper contest.

Pam Bunka, adviser from Fenton HS, and Kris Turner, deputy managing editor at The State News, judged yearbook entries. sions and the time flew from there. Silently, we would read half the entries, grade them on a scale from one to five, and then switch piles. Categories were across the board, from Illustration to News Analysis to Human Interest and then some. After we finished the entire category, we came together and determined the “Nice Tries” from the “Winners.” I was surprised to find that our scores were very similar – and I had never done this before! As a relatively green teacher, and a newbie when it came to journalism, I felt proud of myself! The couple across from us,

Maria LaCrosse, an education major at MSU with a minor in journalism, and Wilson Wright, a journalism teacher at Shrine Catholic HS, seemed to have found their own system of grading, and it was interesting to listen to them as they commented about what they had read. Just as Sue and I engaged in rhetoric regarding the quality of our students’ writing, they also had comments that at times seemed comical and at other times was quite serious, much like the writing itself. Ultimately, we were sincerely impressed with the quality of work coming from this year’s pool

Michelle Fulton, right, works with Sue Spalding from Quincy HS. of qualified contestants. Although I am told that there will always be entries that seem hurried or not well thought out, there was an abundance of good work – really good work – that made this experience worthwhile. Not only did I learn more about layout and news writing, I also realized the expectations I must hold for my future students. They are capable of so much, and I saw an abundance of talent on that sunny Saturday in March. Michelle Fulton is an English teacher at Holt HS and is working on her journalism endorsement.

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The First Amendment

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Student VoiceS:

Celebrating The First Amendment If you’re a high school student, you are eligible to enter the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association’s “Why My Voice Matters” essay contest. This essay contest is being held in conjunction with our “Student Voices: Celebrating The First Amendment” event, which will be held on Constitution Day on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008, at the Michigan State Capitol, from 4 to 6 p.m. Become an integral part of our celebration by writing an essay about the First Amendment in the style of the National Public Radio “This I Believe” program. The NPR guidelines ask that essays be a statement of personal belief. Their suggestions are paraphrased below: Tell A Story Be specific. Take your belief and ground it in the events of your life. Consider moments when belief was formed or tested or changed. Think of your own experiences and family, and tell of the things you know that no one else does. Your story does not have to be heart-warming or gut-wrenching—it can even be funny— but it should be real, and it should be yours. Make sure your story ties to the essence of your daily life philosophy and the shaping of your beliefs. Be Brief Your statement should be between 350-500 words. That’s about three minutes when read aloud at a natural pace. Name Your Belief If you can’t name it in a sentence or two, your essay might not be about belief. Instead of making a list of your beliefs, consider focusing on one belief. Three minutes is a very short time. Be Positive Avoid preaching or editorializing. Tell what you believe rather than what you don’t believe. Avoid speaking in the editorial “we.” Make the essay about you; speak in the first person. Be Personal Write in words and phrases that are comfortable for you to speak. Read the essay aloud to yourself several times. Read it to others as well. Each time you read it, edit and simplify until you find the words, tone and story that truly echo your belief and the way you speak. See examples at http://thisibelieve.org/index.php. First, second, and third place winners will read their essay at the “First Amendment in Action” celebration on the steps of the Michigan State Capitol, on Sept. 17, 2008. The first place winner will receive $100; the second place winner will receive $75; the third place winner will receive $50. Winning essays will also be posted on the MIPA Web site and printed in the celebration program. Directions: Please send your essay as a word document attachment to MIPA at mipa@msu.edu by May 15, 2008. Put the word “essay” in the subject line of your e-mail. At the top of your story, put your full name, your cell phone number, your school, your age and your grade. Please include a school mug shot.

Sponsored by the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association and the Michigan State University School of Journalism. April 2008 ■ 7

MIPA announces new service for yearbook and newspapers Starting with your 2008 yearbook or 2008-2009 newspaper, you can get an annotated critique from MIPA.

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By Lynn Strause, MIPA Yearbook Chair

eginning with 2008 yearbooks, MIPA will offer annotation for an additional fee. What this means is that, in addition to filling out the evaluation booklet, the judge will also make comments directly in the copy of the book or newspapers you send. MIPA will charge an additional $40 for this service. Is it worth the extra money? As both an adviser and a judge, I say yes. When I judge yearbooks that request annotation, I make a lot more specific comments. Rather than writing a general comment in the evaluation booklet like “Some leads could be stronger” or “Be more careful to avoid editorial comments,” I can underline specific leads and editorial comments. I can note errors in grammar or style, something I might not note spe-

MIPA/School of Journalism 305 Communication Arts Building Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824-1212

cifically in the booklet. I can draw a line around where photos should be cropped. I can circle awkward white space. I can comment on every spread, something that I would not do if I were just writing comments in the booklet. As an adviser, annotation was valuable because it was specific. I could give the book to the staff and have them look at the comments so we could discuss improvements or changes. I didn’t have to worry about figuring out which spreads or copy blocks the judge referenced in general comments. If you are interested in this service for your 2008 book or your 2008-2009 newspaper, be sure to check the appropriate boxes on the contest form. Remember, the additional service comes with an extra charge of $40, but in my opinion, it’s worth it.

Judging Day 2008

Melissa Leighton, adviser at Linden HS, fills out a winners’ form during judging day on March 1. More than 65 people gave up a Saturday to help make sure more than 4,450 entries in yearbook, newspaper and video got judged. Awards were given out at the MIPA Awards and On-Site Contests Conference on April 21. Read one judge’s comments on page 6.