Law, Ethics, and News Literacy

One initiative I have been part of to promote news literacy is traveling to middle school classrooms and teaching about the importance of journalism, as well as delivering copies of our paper around the district and local community. Culture has shifted away from traditional newspapers, so it can be easy for students to cast aside student publications as a lost art. It is our mission as student journalists to promote strong, honest journalism to other kids. If they have a positive experience with our publication, it can go a long way towards their long-term trust and consumption of quality news.

Another area where I have led proactively as Editor-in-Chief is my relationship with our administration. Mason High School has prior review for our paper. Our school district is very large and very conscious of its public reception, so they like to have a heads up on what is in our paper. I have established a strong relationship with our administrator, and share our process with him early rather than directly before we send to the paper like previous editors have. This has built a stronger trust between our paper and administration, and given us the ability to tell potentially hot-button stories the way we want to. One example of this is in our most recent edition when we had a story about the rise of teenage vaping around the nation. The writer's vision was to determine if vaping is as large of a problem at Mason as it is in other high schools. I spent a lot of time working with the writer to balance getting actual student testimony in the story without putting them at risk. Our principal was fully cooperative with the story, and we were able to publish our story as intended without any censorship  (the story is attached below).