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New Voices
I strongly believe that the student voice is one of the most valuable sources for storytelling and demonstrating strong, ethical, reporting. After all, we spend years perfecting our journalistic skills. Because I believe students should be free from censorship, I took on the role of President of the New Voices KY team this year.
As a staff, we work to get the New Voices Bill passed. This bill would ensure all student-run publications in the state of KY would be free from censorship and allowed to have their stories published, without a lengthy or strict approval process from their administration and board.
Being in charge this year means I'm the contact point when writing to legislators and representatives over KY, aiming to get co-sponsors for the New Voices bill, and reaching out to other schools in KY for more support.
Our new Instagram page!
It's a journalist's duty to understand what the First Amendment means, how to be a responsible and ethical journalist, and what censorship looks like. To emphasize this, I set up our staff with a Q&A over Zoom with Cathy Kuhlmeier to discuss her experiences.
This year our New Voices team...
This year our New Voices team...
-Created an Instagram Account: @kynewvoices
-Gained Sen. Reginald Thomas as a co-sponsor
-Piqued the interest of Sen. Karen Berg and Sen. Jimmy Higdon
-Formed a coalition with students from other school districts in KY
-Met over zoom with Sen. Max Wise to discuss our need for the bill in KY, and what our next steps should be
-Was interviewed by Murray State NPR (LINK)
-Was featured on the news twice with LEX18 and WHAS11 to raise awareness about our work
-Was invited to write an editorial about our coalition in Louisville's "LEO Weekly" magazine
This year, I went to submit our school to the JEA SPRC First Amendment Freedom Contest, and as I went to attach our board policy, I realized that it completely contradicted our current New Voices Resolution that was acknowledged by the board, and it also contradicts the code we have followed all of these years (SPJ Code of Ethics). I talk about it with my advisor, and decided to email the Bullitt County Public Schools superintendent.
Above is the New Voices editorial I put together for LEO Weekly Magazine with the help of my adviser.
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