A combination of cuts in high school journalism programs and the ease of web publishing could start driving more students away from traditional student newspapers. Especially if more administrators start clamping down as a couple principals in Georgia and California have recently.
The web offers opportunities for end-runs around campus censorship, but future student journalists may miss out on the positive influences of faculty advisers. If that happens, others will have to step forward to guide them.
When a Georgia principal halted publication of a school paper in May, the students took their battle online and posted the final issue and an email trail. Now, a similar battle is brewing in Bakersfield, Calif., where a school principal felt an edition about gay students on campus would be too incendiary. The East Bakersfield High School student staff has filed suit with the backing of the ACLU and lost their first round. If they feel they've lost their voice in The Kernal, perhaps, they too may be tempted to dodge the school's red tape and create their own independent publication.
Interestingly, the Bakersfield Californian in its coverage (registration required) of the lawsuit has published redacted versions of the student paper, using the legal filings.
The Pebblebrook High School principal in Georgia canceled the journalism class to fund other programs and stopped students from publishing the final issue of BrookSpeak. The principal announced those decisions after complaining about the paper's focus on negative issues.
The National Scholastic Press Association reported in 2003 that the number of journalism courses offered in California had dropped more than 10 percent since 1996. In California, given the condition of the state budget and poor financing for public education, it's quite likely the number is even lower now and will continue to drop. According to a survey produced by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s High School Initiative this year, "Of the high schools that do not offer student newspapers, 40 percent have eliminated student papers within the past five years. Of those, 68 percent now have no media."
Meanwhile, it seems like every middle school student has a MySpace or Xanga site. These sites tend to be more about who likes whom and who wears what than about any substantive issues (at least in the mind of this 44-year-old, but what do I know?). If, when today's middle schoolers get to high school, they want to tackle bigger issues and don't have an outlet for publishing a student newspaper, what will they do? They'll put up a blog or find some other citizen journalism outlet.
Off-campus publishing gives students lots of freedom, but if faculty advisers disappear completely, that will be a loss. I'm sure there are some crappy advisers, but student journalists often have great things to say about their advisers. Read the BrookSpeak email trail and see how Pebblebrook High's Jonathan Stroud stood up for his students.
Mike Orren of Pegasus News, which plans to launch a citizen journalism project later this year, wrote the school principal and offered to provide advice to student journalists by phone or email. That's generous of Mike, who was in attendance last month when citizen media pioneers met in the Bay Area to talk about issues involving the training of citizen journalists. That discussion at some point should include a component specifically targeted at high school citizen journalists who are publishing independently.