Quill & Scroll Spring 2013 Magazine

Quill & Scroll

facebook in class

why evaluate media? blogging with images censored today’s visual journalist summertime workshops journalism’s future covering school violence

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in this issue Quill & Scroll Volume 87 • Issue 2

Magazine of Quill and Scroll International Honor Society for High School Journalists

Editor and Business Manager Vanessa Shelton Executive Director, Quill and Scroll Society Assistant Editor Lindsay Graf Sophomore, University of Iowa Contributing Editors Julie E. Dodd Professor, College of Journalism and Mass Communication The University of Florida, Gainesville Bruce E. Konkle Professor, College of Journalism University of South Carolina, Columbia Book Editor Barbara Bealor Hines Professor, Mass Communication and Media Studies, Howard University, Washington, D.C.

the index

4. Using Facebook in the Classroom by Kevin Hull 5. Annual Evaluations: A rite of spring by Logan Aimone 6. Censored by Candace Bowen 7. Today’s Visual Journalist by Adam Wesley 8. Summertime and the Living is--WORKSHOPS by Mary Kay Downes 10. The Future of Scholastic Journalism by Mark Newton 12. School Violence Coverage Roadblocks by Frank D. LoMonte 14. Book Reviews by Barbara Hines 18. Journalism and Technology by Judy Robinson and Julie Dodd

the cover The cover is student Chris Bull’s photo from the El Paisano yearbook of Westlake High School in Austin, Texas. This photo won an Honorable Mention award as a Feature Photo in the 2012 Yearbook Excellence Contest. Visit our website www.quillandscroll.org to learn more about our contests.

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Using Facebook in the classroom

By KEVIN HULL Kevin Hull is a Mass Communication Ph.D student at the University of Florida. Kevin spent 10 years as a sports broadcaster before transitioning to the classroom as a digital media teacher in North Carolina.

f As students are becoming more “wired” by the year, schools are attempting to find new ways to keep students both engaged in the classroom and informed about events happening within the school. With the majority of students already using Facebook for their own interactions among their peers, it was proposed that the social network could be used to distribute a weekly school newscast and keep students informed about assignment due dates, test dates, and other important information.

To study this possibility, a Facebook page was created for digital media students at a high school in North Carolina in the spring of 2012.

The page was created as a business page, so students would “like” the page and all interactions would be visible on the Facebook wall. With many school districts having concerns about teacher-student relationships online, this option was chosen because all contact between a teacher and the student would be in a public forum that could be monitored by others. Students were given the choice of “liking” the class Facebook page or abstaining to do so. The page was updated several times a week with reminders about tests, due dates, and displaying examples of student work. In addition, the school’s weekly newscast was uploaded to YouTube, and the link was shared each Monday afternoon on the class Facebook page. Additional updates on school news were posted on the Facebook timeline, creating a feeling of a true “news” feed among those who “liked” the class Facebook page.

After nearly three months of using the page, the students in the class were given a survey based on whether they had “liked” the class Facebook page or not. The 29 students who did “like” the page took a seven question survey in which they responded overwhelmingly that they felt informed about and connected to their class. Based on the results of the survey, 26 of the 29 students said they enjoyed seeing their classmates’ work on the Facebook page. However, the 21 students who did not “like” the class Facebook page had similar responses to those who did “like” the page. The majority of those students who did not “like” the class page replied that they knew when tests and projects were due, and that they were indifferent about seeing their classmates’ work.

Therefore, results showed that there was not much difference between

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the two groups, and perhaps Facebook was not a successful educational tool that could be implemented into a school environment. But a closer look shows that those numbers may be deceiving: 26 of the 29 students who “liked” the class Facebook page indicated they would like to see more teachers create a Facebook page, while 27 of the 29 either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I benefitted from following the class Facebook page.” The survey showed that the majority of the students who followed the class Facebook page found it to be helpful and would like to see more teachers adopt this classroom tool.

In addition, Facebook appears to be an excellent place to distribute a school-wide newscast because the show appeared directly in the followers’ news feeds. Students who “liked” the class Facebook page reported feeling more informed about and connected to their class than those who did not “like” the page, which is a direct result of having the newscast readily available. Students were able to get the latest information about the school and it was delivered directly to them via their computer or Facebook app on their smartphone. In the comments section of each newscast post on Facebook, students were able to “like” the different episodes, while providing comments on stories and giving suggestions for future ones. In addition, by liking the page themselves, parents and others outside of the school now had access to the news as well, so information could be broadcast to many more viewers than before.

The research here could open the doors for a closer examination into using social networks in schools for both academic and journalistic purposes. School newspapers could put their editions online and link to various articles via a Twitter account for the paper. Students could use Edmodo, the educational version of Facebook, to provide updates on stories the paper or newscast is working on, while taking suggestions for future reports. Pinterest, MySpace, and YouTube may also provide tools that could be helpful in increasing readership and viewers. With the opportunities growing among these social networks, and an audience of students already on the network, it would seem that Facebook, and networks like it, would be a good way to distribute journalistic information throughout the school and to the surrounding community.

Annual evaluations: A rite of spring The value of an outside perspective in improving media

By LOGAN AIMONE Executive Director - National Scholastic Press Association

Each spring brings another set of passages to high schools: end-of-year testing, the Prom and graduation. The journalism program is no different with its year-in-review newspaper, yearbook distribution, selection of new editors and staff and maybe a farewell banquet. The adviser likely gives a final exam or asks students to turn in a portfolio of their cumulative work. Along with those important events and activities, each publication or media staff should take advantage of the annual spring renewal to seek an outside perspective for maximum benefit.

Unlike students in other scholastic activities, journalism students have an opportunity to gain a greater understanding about the work they do by participating in an annual evaluation.

Producing a newspaper, yearbook, website or magazine is a specialized activity. Getting better at it requires a broader perspective than just the students and adults in the newsroom.

Fortunately, staffs have numerous options for just this kind of advice through one of the critique services at the national or state levels.

NSPA has a longstanding program, as do the Columbia Scholastic Press Association and the Quill and Scroll Society. Many state associations also offer evaluation services. These programs provide two important aspects to success: recognition for the hard work and achievement of the publication staff over the past year and suggestions for how to improve the endeavor.

The critique can’t be done in isolation, though. It must be put to work. Improvement is a process. Because the staff composition changes each year, a critique evaluates the publication

at that time. That’s why the rating or score must be secondary to the suggestions for improvement. Through evaluation, reflection and action, a critique will provide a path to build on the foundation.

Evaluation. The evaluation comes in two stages. First, the staff must evaluate its strengths and weaknesses. Some critique programs will demand more evaluation from the editors and staff, while others request only a letter of explanation. However, identifying the publication’s areas of strength and deficiency will help the evaluating judge provide targeted feedback.

Second, the judge will apply the association’s criteria to the publication. The judge will write about what is working and what isn’t. He or she should provide a blend of praise and suggestions — ideally with specific tips for how to make the improvements — and a rating according to the criteria.

Reflection. Once the evaluation has been returned to the adviser and staff, it’s time to review the comments and reflect on the suggestions from the judge. This evaluation from an outsider may raise some important issues on which the staff can reflect. Some of the points might be reminders of more rigid rules of scholastic journalism, while others might be more in line with preference or taste. Regardless, the editors and staff ought to consider each point carefully and determine whether it should be accepted. If a suggestion is to be disregarded, the rationale should be clearly stated. Simply disagreeing or taking a defensive attitude does not help improve the publication. From there, the editors

can work with the adviser to determine the best course of action for implementing the suggestions and making the most of the critique.

Action. The steps to be taken after an evaluation are best expressed in a set of goals. Some of the goals may be individual, such as an editor’s goal to have more of a certain type of coverage in each edition. Others may be staff goals, such as reducing the number of errors before submitting pages or teaching staff members how to improve their photography skills. The adviser and editor in chief should work with section editors to develop the individual goals and staff goals based on the suggestions from the evaluation.

The action plan is up to the staff. For example, if the judge suggests including more stories about off-campus sports and recreation, how will the staff make this happen?

Evaluation, reflection and action can happen throughout the year, but the annual review is one way to create a benchmark. Periodically refer to the goals as a way to keep the staff on track throughout the year. The previous year’s critique can be referenced when setting goals and also when submitting for the next critique.

It’s acceptable to miss a few goals. Make sure that the staff identifies and reflects on the reasons for falling short.

So add a new rite of spring to the staff’s checklist: the annual critique. When the critique is returned a few months after submitting, the staff can get to work implementing the suggestions for the publication or website. Celebrate the rating, but use the evaluation as a launch pad for improvement. quill

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Twenty-five years under Hazelwood. An entire generation or more of student journalists has worked with the threat of censorship always lurking in their administrators’ offices.

Or has it really been that bad?

One way to find out was to talk to advisers who were in the classroom and student media newsroom both before Jan. 13, 1988, and after. What impact did they see from that landmark Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier decision? What difference did it make to them and their students and others they observed?

That’s why the Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University took advantage of the Fall 2012 JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention in San Antonio to interview four such advisers who were attending. All taught at that earlier time, and one is still in the classroom while the other three are retired but very much involved with high school media as mentors in a Journalism Education Association program and serve as press association board members.

Gary Lindsay, JEA regional director recently retired from Kennedy High School, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was only in his second year of advising when Hazelwood came about. In the video, he says he had just taken a class from Mark Goodman, then director of the Student Press Law Center, now Knight Chair in Scholastic Journalism at Kent State.

Lindsay says he thought he understood the law before the decision but found the resulting changes “really confusing.”

Lindsay describes how those in Iowa worked on legislation to “take the state back to the Tinker Standard.” Even with that, though, not everyone knows the law. He shared an anecdote about an attorney, when

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By CANDACE PERKINS BOWEN

approached by a principal, who didn’t even know the state law existed. Hazelwood “really clouded” even what those in his state succeeded in doing.

Local media interviewed Janet Levin, adviser in 1988 and today at John Hersey High School, Arlington Heights, Ill. Because she had been in the classroom all day, she wasn’t sure of the case’s outcome, but she managed to say, “ I’m certain this ruling will have no impact on me because I’m positive the administrators in my district have enough faith in their newspaper adviser and their students that they won’t change a thing.”

Levin says this is basically what happened, though over the years with four principals, her students learned to approach each new one and ask, “What’s your view of censorship?” The possibility that something could change for the worse was “always in the back of our minds,” she says.

She has seen a change in the climate of the school, however, during her 32 years of advising. Those in the school seem more surprised that students can publish what they want. “They’re shocked that kids have rights,” she says. To new advisers: “Realize you are not alone.”

At Homestead High School in Cupertino, Calif., Nick Ferentinos’ principal almost immediately took what he saw as an opportunity to remove an article in progress about an HIV-positive student. “Put it on the shelf,” he said, according to Ferentinos.

When a Bay area reporter called to interview him and asked if he thought this (censorship) could ever happen in Homestead, Ferentinos said, “It just did.” This was one of the first stories to get national coverage.

Since then, he has seen a “chilling effect.” “We can’t run that,” Ferentinos hears

Executive Director Center for Scholastic Journalism

students say. “It’s been insidious,” he said.

“We don’t see as many of the courageous stories… even in states like California” that were around before 1988.

Wayne Dunn, president of the Ohio Scholastic Media Association and JEA mentor, had been advising four years at Lebanon (Ohio) High School in 1988. When his principal wanted more control after the Hazelwood decision, his student editor-in-chief pointed out that their publication was a forum and the principal couldn’t have prior review. “You don’t know that -- you’re just a kid,” the principal said. A day later he had checked with his own lawyer and came back, admitting, “You were right, but we’ll change that.”

Finally Dunn asked the principal, “What DO you want [in the paper]?” His response: “I want everything positive!” “That’s not journalism,” Dunn said.

When Dunn moved to Lakota West High School a few years later, the situation was totally different. In fact, one administrator even said his newsmagazine staff “wasn’t shaking things up enough.” But that is an unusual situation, Dunn said.

As JEA mentors in Ohio, he and his wife Georgia have seen principals at the schools where their mentees teach who insist on prior review. “Some of them will not sign the contract” that says they will not censor, even if that means their journalism teacher couldn’t receive such free support through the mentoring program.

So, did Hazelwood have the kind of impact journalism educators feared in 1988?

According to four advisers who have seen the before and after, yes, the chilling effect on student journalists has indeed made a difference, and it hasn’t been a good one.

Go to http://www.csjkent.org for the video.

Today’s visual journalist

Goodbye film, darkrooms and scanners; hello memory cards and Photoshop Photographers shoot Iowa State University Coach Fred Hoiberg (left) and Coach Fran McCaffery of the University of Iowa before the rivals face off in a basketball game at the UI’s Carver-Hawkeye arena in Iowa City on Dec. 7, 2012.

As a college student in 1999, Brian Ray was covering a University of Iowa vs. University of Connecticut basketball game at Madison Square Garden in New York City for The Daily Iowan newspaper. He left the arena at halftime, booked it across town to the AP world headquarters to develop his film and scan his photos for filing with the newspaper in Iowa City, Iowa.

“I didn’t even see the second half of the game,” Ray said.

Photojournalism has come a long way in the past decade.

Photos are at the forefront of the digital media revolution simply because of the visual nature of the Internet.

“The Web would be boring without pictures,” said Ray, now chief photographer at The Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa.

The expansive space for photos on the Internet has led to higher demand by media organizations, but this is not necessarily good for photographers.

“It used to be three pictures [from a sporting event,] now it’s 30,” said Ray, who was a photographer on the publications staffs at Davenport Central High School in Iowa. “But people forget that pictures don’t just happen.

We need time to do good journalism, do good stories.”

Time is one of the most important changes to the industry in recent years.

Freelance photographer Stephen Mally, whose clients include the Reuters wire service, stressed the importance of being able to maximize efficiency in the field, including editing and filing photos from mobile devices.

“Sometimes I’ll just file one or two photos [via mobile]… so that way the editor’s not calling every five minutes… just to get something on the wire. Then I’ll do a full edit later,” Mally said.

The jobs for photographers are changing as well as the tools they use.

“Staff jobs are an endangered species,” Mally said.

While not arguing that traditional staff photographer positions are going to disappear, he sees business and entrepreneurial skills as increasingly important, given the trend of more freelancing in the industry.

The rise of Internet journalism has also required photographers to become more than still-image shooters. Proficiency with video and audio recording is mandatory, as well as production of multimedia that blends video, photos and audio into a minute or so long story of the event.

Photoshop, PhotoMechanic, Final Cut Pro

By ADAM WESLEY Photo Editor - The Daily Iowan are all digital tools a photographer must be as comfortable using as a camera. Pre-captioning, tagging photos in-camera and maximizing the efficiency of time usage are paramount, as cameras and memory enable more shooting than ever.

“You can shoot 5,000 photos at a football game and it doesn’t cost anything,” Ray said.

Not only has technology changed the physical limits of how much a photographer can shoot, but it provides many different ways to file photos.

Ray forgot his laptop when covering a basketball tournament earlier this year, but he was still able to file his photos via software on his iPhone.

“Through technology you can overcome stupidity like that,” he said.

Despite his self-described love of technology, Ray cautions against the idea that it is changing the core aspect of the job.

“I hope it doesn’t change [photographers]… I hope people still respect photojournalism and place value in the art… telling the stories,” he said.

The one constant, even today, is the way photographers go about telling stories.

“Photojournalism is photojournalism. It doesn’t change,” Ray said. quill

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Summertime – and the living is WORKSHOPS

By MARY KAY DOWNES

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CSPA Summer Workshop at Columbia University June

A week ago I received an email from the parent of an editor who was planning summer vacation for the family.

She wanted to know, “When is yearbook camp this year? We want to plan our beach week around those dates. ” Ideally, all journalism programs will have such an eager interest instilled in the staff so that their entire family schedules journalism training as a “must do” over the summer months.

We can all take a lesson from the sports programs in our schools. Often coaches make it mandatory to attend,

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as a team, soccer, basketball, lacrosse camps. The music programs have jumped in as well. We have marching band camp, show choir camp and color-guard camp at our school. All such events are designed to give a leg up to the participants so that once the school year begins the students have committed to the programs and learned some essential skills for success. The band director can zero in on the steps to wow the crowds, the soccer team can know whom to rely on for the best headers, and likewise, the yearbook staff can

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finalize their theme for the upcoming book.

Early training for the year ahead benefits students attending journalism camps and workshops nationwide. All offer opportunities for staffs to bond, for young journalists to hone skills and for students to get exposure to national figures in the world of journalism.

In order to learn as much as you can about the opportunities out there for summer camps and workshops, it is wise to start planning now so parents and students can plan ahead, and so you can

fundraise if necessary to help pay the tuition.

National press organizations such as the Columbia Scholastic Press Association offer camps that focus on a wide range of journalism skills. The CSPA Summer Workshop held on the Columbia University campus June 23-28 features a week of intensive study in areas such as editorial leadership, editing and digital media. It has the added advantage of being situated in the Big Apple and students can take advantage of opportunities such as attending a Broadway play.

Regional organizations such as the Southern Interscholastic Press Association also host summer workshops; theirs is a five-day high school journalism summer camp held in the Courtyard Marriott hotel adjacent to the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

CJI helps students and advisers augment their knowledge of editing, writing, designing and production techniques for all scholastic publications and productions.

In addition to large group lectures, students and advisers can take individual classes in broadcast, desktop publishing, newspaper, yearbook and journalistic writing.

It is also important to not overlook opportunities offered by your individual states. Virginia, for example, offers an opportunity named J-CAMP. J-CAMP 2013 will be held at the historic Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va., and will feature four days of intense journalistic studies. The faculty includes nationally recognized instructors such as Bobby Hawthorne, Robin Sawyer and Bradley Wilson.

Specialized camps for individual publications are also a popular option. Representatives from the major yearbook companies organize and run camps and the faculty includes company personnel and representatives as well as nationally known advisers. Often situated on college campuses, students eat, drink and breathe yearbook during very long days followed by long nights developing theme packets. Advisers attend these camps and relish the opportunity to meet often with their staffs and future editors. Yearbook reps and other staff members teach students how to work with the specialized software and submission guidelines of each particular company.

In addition, there are national op-

portunities sponsored by organizations such as The Washington Journalism and Media Conference (WJMC). George Mason University, located in the suburbs of our nation’s capitol, welcomes high school student leaders from all over the country as National Youth Correspondents. They have a chance to hear national journalists present and get the rare opportunity to see journalism in action on Capitol Hill. George Mason is the largest public university in Virginia. This summer’s conference will take place July 7-12.

So you find the perfect camp and then ask the logical question – How to pay for tuition? One veteran adviser suggests letting relatives know that a check to help defray camp costs would be a welcome gift for birthdays and holidays.

Typical fundraisers of all sorts can help including car washes, bake sales and candy sales. Mimic the youth club leagues that situate themselves outside of grocery stores with fresh baked goods on Saturday mornings.

You also can ask for help from friendly sources. Often PTSA’s will donate to help pay a portion of costs, and it just might be that your principal has funding for professional development.

Certain advisers who are aware that the often sizeable commission for student portraits usually goes to the principal ask for some of it to help with tuition as the advisers often run the portrait days.

What does a summer experience mean to students? “I loved yearbook camp so much for the past two years,” said Ally Gaffney from Chantilly High School. “We bonded as a staff and received great instruction from our teacher.”

Ally, along with Katie Searle, served as the business editors for Chantilly’s yearbook and both have applied to be a camp director’s assistant this summer after graduation. “I can’t imagine it be July and not be heading up route 15 to Gettysburg College. We have so much fun living and breathing yearbook for the full week,” said Searle.

When you realize how much your staff can benefit from attending a summer camp or workshop, there is really no reason not to go. Look at ads in national journalism magazines, ask advisers in your area or contact the venues directly after an Internet search. The experience is amazing and your program will be enriched by it.

University of Iowa Summer Journalism Workshops High School Student Workshops

July 14-18, 2013

• Yearbook • Adventure Journalism • Editors-in-Chief • Social Media Domination • Advanced News Writers • Photojournalism • Advanced Graphic Design • 5-Day Journalism Workout • Broadcasting All-inclusive tuition, room and meal packages begin at $395

Teacher Workshops

June 17-21 – Online Digital Media Production for High School Journalism

Instructor: Aaron Manfull, Francis Howell N. HS, St. Charles, Mo.

June 24-28 – Online Publication Advising

Instructor: Jack Kennedy, director, Colorado High School Press Association

July 22-26 – On-campus Visual Communication: Theory and Practice, InDesign and Photoshop Instructor: Chris Snider, instructor, Drake University 2 or 3 grad hours per class.

App. $455 per credit hour.

University of Iowa Summer Journalism Workshops

(319) 335-3455 samantha-havel@uiowa.edu www.uiowa.edu/~journshp

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The future of scholastic journalism

By MARK NEWTON President - Journalism Education Association

Ever since I was elected president of the Journalism Education Association about two years ago, I have been consumed with two questions: •What does scholastic journalism look like in the next 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years?

•How do we prepare ourselves to deliver a 21st century education to our (journalism) students?

I’m sure most journalism teachers and student media advisers have struggled with similar questions. Asking these types of questions and struggling to find answers are probably what makes

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us tick.

Google (I know, I know) “the future of journalism” and one gets about 522,000,000 results, including futureofjournalism.net. Many depict the gloom and doom we’ve heard for the past five or 10 years. “Newspapers and magazines are in trouble” is the lead from the top result, Y Combinator, an organization that funds startups. “The future of journalism is the opposite of tax and taxes; there seems to be no certainty to it whatsoever,” argues a Chicago Sun-Times article from early 2013.

Essentially, the challenge of teaching

journalism today is: What do we teach today and tomorrow when the professionals funding and creating journalism are unsure of what journalism will look like in the short-term future, much less the long-term?

While those challenges may appear overwhelming, I would like to suggest those of us vested in scholastic journalism are best prepared to tackle the challenge. In fact, there is no doubt in my mind that we will excel at preparing our students for the 21st century workplace.

In “The Future of Journalism: Good for You, Scary for Us” (TIME, Oct. 13,

2011) Claire Suddath states: “Information will come out faster, more people will make their voices heard, but amid all the clamor and catchy headlines there will still be a place for thoroughly reported, well-written articles that take you a while to read.”

I’ve come to believe that the key to our success is working smarter. Just like the professionals, and to better prepare them for all post-secondary education options, our students should be comprehensive journalists. The student-journalists we must focus our instruction on must be able to do many things well. The “new” student-journalist is not a specialist, rather a generalist.

Probably the best example of what I am talking about is at the University of Oregon where leadership at the Daily Emerald changed models after 92 years as a Monday-Friday newspaper to “launch a new Emerald completely rebuilt for the digital age. The gray, daily newspaper will be replaced by a modern college media company,” said the paper’s leadership. “We are making this change to deliver on our mission to serve our community and prepare our student staff for the professional world.”

Essentially, the focus now was two weekly editions: On Monday: Newsweek + ESPN The Magazine. And, on Thursday: Rolling Stone + Wired + Vanity Fair. And, their website was all real-time news.

According to the paper’s leadership (http://future.dailyemerald.com/#!/de-

tails), the change had four goals: •Provide a better service to our readers and clients.

•Better prepare our student interns for their first job.

•Free up resources to grow our digital audience.

•We can do the journalism that matters most — and cut out the rest.

To me, the change was obvious — and urgent. This was how I would deliver a 21st century education to the journalism students at the Mountain Vista High School where I am in my fifth year on staff.

My interest in the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (p21.org), a national organization that advocates for 21st century readiness for every student and the push from my school district leaders, helped out. In short, there are four 21st century skills, the 4 C’s: Critical thinking, Collaboration, Communication, and Creativity. I’ve argued before in this column that those skills are exactly our focus in scholastic student media.

With all this in mind, we blended my news magazine class and my yearbook class into two VISTAj staffs. We established an editorial leadership class that allowed for the news magazine editors and the yearbook editors to come together as joint leaders of the program.

One editor, the editor, enrolled in all three journalism courses.

Over the summer, united as one program — not two separate media — we

established policy and procedure, created a cohesive design, determined assessments and outlined assignments and deadlines.

Once school started, I spent the better part of a week explaining the new (and improved!) comprehensive VISTAj program to students who had enrolled thinking they were in the news magazine or yearbook class.

Not surprisingly, the professionals were on our side. “Journalism isn’t dying; it’s evolving,” reported SustainableJournalism.org. “To survive, we’re all going to have to get more creative and adapt as new technologies and methodologies appear. The traditional titles – reporter, copy editor, photographer, page designer – may fade away or take on new meanings.”

Said Media Jobs Daily: “The journalist of the future will need to know how to package content in multiple ways (in slideshows, ebooks, social media, or on the Web)…”

In the end, the students were in. Apprehensive, but in.

And, as you can imagine, we’ve had our ups and downs. I wish I could report that all students energetically embraced the VISTAj program. I wish I could report that it all was so, so easy. I wish I could report that we have made every deadline and that every student was, indeed, a highly effective generalist.

It’s not that easy. But, it’s worth it today. And, it will be worth it again tomorrow. quill

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School violence coverage roadblocks

By FRANK D. LOMONTE Executive Director - Student Press Law Center

For people who grew up in the 1990s, it’s impossible to hear the word “Columbine” without immediately thinking “school shooting.” And for today’s students, the word “Newtown” will carry the same emotional response for many years to come.

From Colorado to Connecticut, violence at schools is headline-making national news. Even for schools not directly touched by crime, just the unlikely possibility of being “the next Newtown” is causing school officials and policymakers to rethink everything: Should principals or teachers be armed? Do violent video games turn people to crime?

School safety concerns are a legitimate news story, and the student media is in a unique position to add an “insider” vantage point. But school violence is one of the touchiest subjects that student media can take on – and because it is so sensitive, administrators may consider it

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“too hot to handle.”

In just the past few months, coverage of school violence has provoked a wave of censorship. A principal in Missouri confiscated a student news magazine because of a two-page spread describing the arrest of a student who brought a gun to school. A principal in California impounded – but later released – a newspaper that quoted school employees who questioned the school’s safety plan. And there are many other examples.

To give school violence the coverage it deserves, without crossing lines of ethics or bad taste and inviting censorship, begins with getting informed.

(1) Be prepared for negative reactions – and overreactions. At a public school, the First Amendment provides some protection for the independence of student journalism (and state laws sometimes offer even broader rights).

Schools may not censor without, at the

very least, some legitimate educational basis. Merely covering up information that reflects negatively on the school is not recognized as a legally valid basis.

In general, students have had no luck challenging their schools in court when the issue involves violence. Even when school decisions seem unreasonable, judges are very reluctant to second-guess principals if safety might be at risk.

For example, in March 2012, a federal appeals court threw out a case brought by the family of a fifth-grade student in New York who was suspended for a crayon drawing that showed an astronaut wishing the school would explode.

Even though the school’s decision seems ridiculous, the judges weren’t willing to say that the punishment violated the student’s rights.

Probably the biggest risk for student media is “humor columns” that make light of violence. Jokes about bringing

weapons to school or blowing up the building are always in questionable taste – but after the tragic Newtown, Conn., school shootings, it’s highly unlikely that a judge and jury would regard such humor as worthy of First Amendment protection.

(2) Be mindful of privacy – but separate the real privacy concerns from the imaginary ones. Because the subject matter is so sensitive, schools sometimes overreact and censor any references to violence or crime affecting students.

That’s what happened last year at a high school in Andale, Kan., when student journalists tried to write about a car wreck that injured two classmates. The school’s principal censored the story, insisting it was an “invasion of privacy” to publish information about the accident – even though the victims had agreed to be interviewed, and the facts about the wreck came from an official police report.

Legally, there is no chance of a school or its journalists being liable for “invasion of privacy” for reporting facts that come from a public record such as a police report. That information is not “private.” Reporting about matters of public concern – including car accidents – is never an invasion of privacy.

That is doubly true when the people in the story have given consent.

Once a person agrees to be interviewed for publication, that person gives up any right to claim that the information in the interview is “private.”

(Many people, even trained experts, misunderstand the privacy of juvenile crime. It’s true that hearings and records in juvenile court are usually kept confidential. But those confidentiality laws apply only to the court and to the people who work there. There is not a complete ban on discussing crimes committed by juveniles.)

Nor is it a violation of the federal student privacy law, FERPA, for the student media to use the names of students in reporting about crime and violence.

FERPA applies only to information that comes out of confidential “education records.” Reporters are

free to publish facts they gather independently, as long as they’re not looking at confidential school files.

Even if the law allows you to use names, consider whether it’s necessary to tell the story. If Johnny Jones was arrested for bringing a gun to school last month, you are within your legal rights to use Johnny’s name in the news story. But if the story is a month old, everyone who knows Johnny already knows what happened.

The bigger and better story is not what Johnny did, but how others at the school have been affected by it, and what – if anything – the school and district are doing to respond.

(3) Present the facts, not rumors or hype. Violence can provoke wild rumors and gossip – and at such times, the role of journalists as truth-seekers is especially important. Factual, wellresearched journalism can make a real contribution to improving safety conditions.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is part of the U.S. Department of Education. One of the most popular NCES reports is the “Indicators of School Crime and Safety,” which shows how your state ranks in all kinds of safety measurements. It’s available, along with a huge amount of other NCES data that student journalists can turn into stories, at http://nces.ed.gov/.

One way the Department of Education gathers information about school safety is by surveying individual schools. Your school or district probably takes part every year in the School Survey on Crime and Safety.

The responses that a public school or school district send to the Department of Education are public record, and journalists can obtain them by filing a freedom-of-information request.

Finally, a great resource for all journalists who write about violence is Columbia University’s Dart Center. Their website, http://dartcenter.org/, provides expert advice that can help you write sensitively about crime without glamorizing it.

Learning to deal with tragedy is an unfortunate but necessary part of being a journalist. By thinking carefully about the possible impact of your stories, you can be a constructive part of healing school violence.

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BOOK REVIEWS

By Barbara Bealor Hines, Howard University, Professor, Department of Journalism As the school year comes to a close, leadership changes and challenges are on the horizon for media staffs. In this issue of Quill & Scroll, check out these books that will provide some ideas for meeting challenges, crafting visuals and providing sound leadership.

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Carvin, Andy. Distant Witness: Social Media, the Arab Spring and a Journalism Revolution. CUNY Journalism Press. 2013.

Increasingly, as social media changes the way we communicate, there will be benchmarks to help us understand our own history. Distant Witness will be one of those benchmarks.

Distant Witness was written by Andy Carvin, social media chief at National Public Radio, and is both memoir and history about the Arab uprisings that became known as Arab Spring. His stories provide real-time updates on people experiencing the conflict – and show how social media now seamlessly report the news.

While at his desk at NPR in Washington, D.C., Carvin was able to craft stories by virtual connections with sources he had never met in person. The reader will meet Mosaab Elshamy, an Egyptian student; Amina Arraf, a Syrian blogger; and Mohamed Nabbous, a Libyan and independent journalist. Their stories bring to life history as it unfolded in the Middle East.

There are valuable lessons about tweeting: when, how and verifying information, as well as the role a journalist can play in a developing society.

Freeman, Michael. The Photographer’s Story: The Art of Vi-

$2995 sual Narrative. The Ilex Press Ltd. 2012.

Michael Freeman is a masterful photographer with more than 100 books published.

Readers are most familiar with his stories and photos that have appeared in Smithsonian magazine and Time-Life’s World’s Wild Places. This latest book focuses on the importance of the narrative, and how to make coherent photo stories.

Freeman began his career in the advertising industry, where he learned the importance of visuals that have impact. And with The Photographer’s Story, Freeman shows just how to use photos for impact. He explains that it’s not just having the great stand-alone shot; it’s important to have many shots. For a

story to communicate visually, there must be multiple effective photos.

Readers learn the importance of rhythm and pace; close-up versus medium and long shots and visual weight.

He shares liberally his own work; he provides classic examples of others. The book is broken into sections: The Photo Essay, Planning and Shooting, Edit and Show, which helps the reader better understand the challenges of making it all come together.

This is a superb book that shows the effort needed to be visually effective. Excellence doesn’t just happen.

Andrew. Andrew Jenks: My Adventures as a Young $1999 Jenks, Filmmaker. Scholastic. 2013.

Many young journalists know Andrew Jenks from his MTV documentary series, “World of Jenks.” Others have seen him on YouTube, or from MTV’s 2012 election campaign, “Power of 12.”

This is Jenks’ effort to document his own progress as a filmmaker in just 26 short years. He provides a look at his personality, his shortcomings and his current whirlwind lifestyle. His writing evidences that whirlwind: “One million dollars.

Whenever I get good news, I always take a moment to enjoy it on my own. Dahl’s news was crazy good, life-changing. I’m going to Japan for nine months to make a

million dollar movie.”

His personality comes through in his chapters: “I want to live with old people,” “MTV comes to my bedroom,” and “Yo, Jenks,” to name just a few. Throughout his work, Jenks follows his own rules for success: always be flexible, fake it till you make it, and never accept no.

In the first year of his MTV series, Jenks lived the life of a different person in each episode (a homeless teen, a teen with autism, a rapper, an NFL cheerleader, and more). This book highlights his personality and drive – and shows the guts and hard work it takes to succeed.

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Book reviews continued $26

Kidder, Tracy and Richard Todd. Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction. Random House. 2013.

This is a story about storytelling and editing. It’s also a lesson in the importance of team work. It’s written by a Pulitzer Prize winner (Kidder) and his award-winning editor (Todd) that dates to their initial contact in 1973 when then-freelance writer (Kidder) seeks an assignment from editor (Todd) at The Atlantic Monthly.

Good Prose explores three major nonfiction forms: narratives, essays and memoirs. It relies on their own stories (both good and bad) as well as the work of other writers and novelists.

From narratives as Into the Wild (Krakauer), to Roughing it (Twain) to Our Mutual Friends (Dickens), to memoirs like Self-Consciousness (Updike), Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (McCarthy) to A Fortunate Man (Berger), the reader gains special insight. In essays like Castro’s Beard (Porter), Here is New York (E.B. White),

to Santaland Diaries (Sedaris), to work by James Agee and Katherine Boo, the authors provide a master class on nonfiction.

Throughout their work, Kidder and Todd emphasize the importance of facts and practicality, lessons learned through their life-long association. They rely on masterful writing (In Cold Blood, The Elements of Style, Speak, Memory and Homage to Catalonia) to challenge the reader.

Stephen Greenblatt, winner of the National Book Award, said “Good Prose takes us into the backroom behind the shop, where strong, effective, even beautiful sentences are crafted. Tracy Kidder and his long-time editor Richard Todd offer lots of useful advice and, still more, they offer insight into the painstaking collaboration, thoughtfulness, and hard work that create masterful illusion of effortless clarity.”

$2795 Sotomayor, Sonia. My Beloved World. Alfred Knopf. 2013.

Leadership takes many forms. In My Beloved World, readers learn about leadership development through adversity. It’s the story of overcoming a difficult environment and health challenges to harness opportunity.

My Beloved World is the story of Sonia Sotomayor, named to the Supreme Court

by President Barack Obama in 2009. But the story isn’t about her service on the highest court of the land. It begins with her childhood in a Bronx housing project, and follows her as she survives juvenile diabetes, graduates as valedictorian of her high school class, to highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School to service as a district attorney, in private practice and her appointment to the Federal District Court.

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Sotomayor shows the will and tenacity of a writer, the thoroughness and dedication required of an attorney. She creates a visual picture of the projects where she lived, the environment that fostered drug addicts and gang members. Yet she persevered and showed great self-reliance, blocking out unhappy family situations by dreaming of a future as a detective, lawyer or judge. Little did she realize it would take her to the nation’s highest court.

Sotomayor is a great storyteller and focuses on her skills as an observer and listener. She overcame feelings of insecurity with a strong will, determination and hard work. Her writing provides solid examples for those seeking to lead, but doubting their own penchant for leadership.

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Journalism and technology

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By JUDY L. ROBINSON AND JULIE E. DODD University of Florida Journalism Professors

Reasons You Need Images in Your Blog

When most student media staffs or individual writers decide to start a blog, they think of what they will write about – the content that will fuel the blog. But the visual appeal of the blog – especially the use of photographs – may make a big difference in whether people will read the blog.

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Images show. Text tells.

A good photo shows your reader what your blog post is about in an instant.

Remember when you were little? Did you ever have “show and tell” in your elementary school class where you could bring in your favorite toy and show the class? There’s a reason it’s called “Show and Tell” because everyone first wants to see. The power of image is to make your viewer then want to read.

Use a clear, focused photo in your post that’s vibrant either in color or composition.

Images break up text in long posts and make the post more easily read.

Whether you realize it or not people want to decide whether to read your post. They make this decision very quickly based on the title and images. Does the post look interesting to read? If the text is dense – not broken into chunks it may look too burdensome to read.

Photos break up the text and make the post more approachable.

Google Images can bring people to your blog when you tag your photos.

Whenever you use a photo in your text be sure to change the filename of the photo. When the photo file comes out of your camera, the filename is non-descriptive, like IMG45789.jpg. You need to rename the filename to a meaningful but short name that reflects what the photo is about -- for example, soccerscore.jpg.

Then when you insert your photo into the post, you need to be sure the photo has a title, an alt (alternative) tag and a description. Some blogging platforms like WordPress let you add these words when you upload the image.

Give your photos meaningful titles and descriptions.

The title might be “Jenny Carlton’s winning soccer kick.”

And the description might be, “In the last minute of the Oakridge vs. Lincoln girls’ soccer game, Jenny Carlton kicked the winning goal for Lincoln High.”

This information is important to add because when

search engines like Google index your blog, the search engine indexes the filename, title and description words that you’ve added to your photos. Then, when people Google Oakridge vs. Lincoln, they will find that photo in Google images.

An example from one of the blogs we maintain – there’s a photo of a falcon with a description “falcon with trainer.”

Many people have come to the blog to watch the video interview with the falcon trainer because they first found the photograph of the falcon on Google images.

One of our students who made the changes to all of his photos on his blog came back to report that within a week, he noticed an increase in visitors to his blog. And many of those visitors had found his blog through the photo filenames and photo tags that were indexed by Google images.

Where do you obtain the images you use on your blog?

This is a very important consideration. Just because you can download a photo from the Internet doesn’t mean that you can use the photo in your blog. Most photos are copyrighted. The best approach to using images on your blog is to use photos that you have taken. Before using a photo taken by someone on the media staff or by one of your friends, you need to ask permission and then provide a photo credit. Flickr’s “The Commons” site does provide some photos that can be downloaded and used with proper attribution. However, be sure you carefully read the site’s Rights Statements. Some websites only allow for downloading photos for private use, such as using a photo as your computer’s screensaver. But most sites have copyright guidelines – often a link at the bottom of the site’s home page. Some blogs draw in readers with just text, but most blogs increase reader interest by including photos.

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QUILL & SCROLL Official Magazine of the International Honorary Society for High School Journalists 100 Adler Journalism Bldg., Room E346 Iowa City, IA 52242-2004

Learn. Create. Explore.

HSJI

High School Journalism Institute journalism.indiana.edu/hsji

STUDENT SKILLS WORKSHOPS, July 8-12

Students learn new skills and sharpen existing talents to help prepare their schools’ publications and media projects for the coming school year.

STUDENT EXPERIENCE WORKSHOPS, July 14-18

Students function as a newsroom staff to produce multimedia stories in a range of subject matters to be published online at hsji.org.

ADVISER WORKSHOPS, June 17-July 18

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Going Mobile: Publishing and Teaching on iPads (June 17-21), Independent Study for Journalism Educators (June 17-July 26), Methods of Teaching Journalistic Writing (June 24-28), Staff Retreat (July 8-12), Practicum (July 8-12)