Direct Lines: Papers Can Set an Example

DIRECT LINES

Papers Can Set an Example

The support of mainstream newspapers – both in their pages and visibility – can do wonders for the state of the high school press. Isn't it worth the effort?

by Sandy Woodcock

I f retired journalism adviser Steve O’Donoghue had his way, newspaper publishers nationwide would take the same approach to high school journalism that the revered Robert Maynard took when he was editor and publisher of The Oakland Tribune. They would be pro-active and staunch defenders of the student press.

O’Donoghue taught journalism for 27 years at Fremont High School in Oakland and remembers Maynard, who died in 1993, as a visible figure in local education.

“He was a presence in the schools,” O’Donoghue says. “He visited them all the time. School administrators knew him; they knew he valued schools and student journalism.”

When the students’ free-expression rights were infringed upon, the Tribune covered it, he says, “sometimes on the front page.” He recalls that a student photographer was suspended for attempting to get photographs of students who had been injured in an on-campus accidental student shooting. The student was attempting to photograph injured students being loaded into an ambulance. School administrators tried to prohibit the student from taking the photos and when the student persisted, the school suspended the student.

The following day the Tribune ran a front-page story which included a photo of the student. The student was “instantly reinstated as a result of the Tribune’s story,” O’Donoghue says.

Knowing that administrative interference and censorship of students’ press rights were likely to be covered in the newspaper was a key piece in preventing such actions, according to O’Donoghue. “Administrators believed if they interfered [with the student press], they’d show up on the next day’s front page,” he says, adding that that wasn’t absolutely true, but the possibility was real enough that administrators feared it.

“Maynard was an advocate, as a member of the community, and as a businessman in Oakland, for scholastic journalism,” he says.

The California Newspaper Publishers Association has taken a step that moves them closer to Maynard’s hands-on involvement with community schools. CNPA allows high schools to become members, waiving the membership fee. Among the benefits of membership is access to CNPA’s Legal HelpLine.

California is also one of only six states to have a law that protects students’ rights to a free press.

But as Jan Ewell knows, state law or not, administrators can find ways to attempt to silence and even abolish student newspapers that make too much ‘noise.’

In 2002, administrators at Ewell’s school, Ranchos Alamitos High School in Garden Grove, Calif., attempted to do just that by replacing her as the newspaper adviser. The move was a result of student articles critical of the school, articles covering poor bathroom conditions and the lack of teachers available to provide after-school help. Ewell says her local paper, The Orange County Register, provided advocacy for the student press that school parents couldn’t provide.

“Schools without activist parents, especially in communities where there are high numbers of immigrant parents who aren’t activists, need the support that professional media provide if they are to have the right to voice their own concerns,” Ewell says.

The industry needs to confront the trends that are undermining the student press and work to counterbalance the trend toward reducing and censoring scholastic media.

“It’s in the publisher’s best interest to make sure that there is funding for electives and extra-curricular activities, especially those relating to literacy. After all, students must be educated if they are to become media consumers,” Ewell says.

Sandy Woodcock is director of NAA Foundation.