HS Journalism News

"As a former intern for a United States Senator, I can tell you exactly what happens when you write to a congressperson. One of my key intern duties was sorting the mail. Every day a big stack of mail came in. And every day my fellow interns and I sorted it. Sorting the mail meant giving each piece of mail to the appropriate congressional staff member."

"A Snapchat recap of a Friday night football game. Streaming school board meetings on Facebook. Posting a breaking news story about a school bomb threat online in real time. None of it would have been possible when high school journalism teacher Sarah Nichols was in her students' shoes more than two decades ago. But the new technologies are a regular part of life for high school journalism programs like hers at Whitney High School in Rocklin, Calif. "It's easier to reach an audience now. With that comes so much responsibility in terms of getting it right and sharing it carefully and wisely and using the tools for good rather than being wooed by their capability," said Nichols, who is the president of the Journalism Education Association, a nonprofit that provides professional development to student journalists and their advisers. New digital technologies-especially social media-come with plenty of headaches for teachers and administrators. But they can help student journalists connect with their digitally savvy peers. They can provide a motivational hook for students who might be disinterested in sitting down and writing an essay-or even a news story."

When I first asked an educator friend to explain the Common Core standards to me, she said, "It boils down to agreements on what kids should learn and when." Sounded simple to me. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-based set of educational standards covering what children should learn in math and English language arts at specific points in K-12 education and tests that match the standards. In this midst of all this lies a central question of interest to those committed to scholastic journalism: What will the Common Core mean for media education in high schools? We'll tackle the controversy, the questions and, most importantly, the potential solutions in this EducationShift special series."

"More than 4,900 high school students, advisers and journalism professionals shared ideas about innovation in scholastic media at the Journalism Education Association/National Scholastic Press Association Annual Fall National High School Journalism Convention in Dallas last month. "We are in the midst of growing an innovative culture of citizens," Rittenour High School (St. Louis, Mo.) journalism adviser Jane Bannester said.  "We need to prepare our future journalists by giving them the basics of good storytelling, but also help them to be flexible with how they send that message.""

"More than a decade ago, Huang, et al. (2006) in the article "Bridging Newsrooms and Classrooms: Preparing the Next Generation of Journalists for Converged Media" conducted a study polling professors, newsroom professionals and editors in search of best practices for training journalism students to work in a converged environment. In their report, they compartmentalized definitions of media convergence into four categories: form, content, corporate and role. At Slippery Rock University, we are introducing these four categories to our staffs to help them understand the process. We believe once we can provide evidence of each area of convergence, we can officially consider ourselves a converged news operation."

"This guideline is the one you must have, but never want to use. It's important to have a guideline in place before a student or staff member dies. Journalists should report a student or staff death in an objective, consistent manner that has been decided when the staff manual is being revised. Choosing what to publish at the time of any tragedy is not wise and can cause staffs to make choices that create problems in the future."

"For high school newspaper advisers, standing up for students' free speech can come with a price. Sometimes, school administrators dole out a subtle punishment to an adviser who lets a student publish a controversial article, like a room change or a denied trip to a workshop. Other times, the adviser could be reassigned to a different position within the school - or even lose their job entirely. Many high school newspaper advisers have said the job can be a balancing act between facilitating student free speech and respecting school administrators. "You have conflicting loyalties," said Student Press Law Center Executive Director Frank LoMonte. "The students look to you as their champion." When an administrator tells a high school newspaper adviser to restrict student speech, he said, advisers often face a difficult personal dilemma. Do they stand up for what they believe in and risk losing their job? Or do they sacrifice their ideals for job security?"

"Author Chris Breaux, a Chartbeat data scientist, summarized results of testing a dozen styles for optimal click-through rates as follows: "Use terse, punchy headlines"; "Ask questions"; "Name drop." None of these properties show much predictive power. That's right, writers: We've proven that "5 Ways To Write The Best Headline Ever" isn't actually that effective. Breaux did find one exception.  Headlines using demonstrative adjective like 'this,' 'that' and 'these' had a substantially higher click-through rate than the norm.  Long headlines also did modestly better. Breaux writes that demonstrative words can create a bit of clickbait intrigue as in "These simple tricks will leave you speechless." Even a much simpler specifier like "GOP debate this evening" can be effective."

"How do people decide what news is trustworthy? And how can journalists influence what users consume and share? This site offers guidance on those questions, which are crucial in an era when journalists struggle to stand out in a minefield of misinformation. With the help of 14 news outlets, we spent a year studying users' reactions to social media strategies designed to enhance trust. What we've learned can help journalists influence what the public chooses to believe, and to pass along. (In a rush? Jump straight to these ideas worth stealing.)"

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"In my 20 years of teaching, I have worked under several principals. My first one at a neighboring school district insisted he reviewed all student media before publication or broadcast. He would personally see to it that ANY information that painted the school in a negative light was cut. The students quickly learned to practice journalism in fear. I quickly learned I couldn't work in such an environment. I have been at Washington High School for 18 years since leaving my first school. While WHS Principals have come and gone, I can gladly say none of them had a negative impact upon me like that first one. Yet, I can also say most of them have made little to no journalistic impact at all. Why? Well, while my students haven't practiced journalism in fear, often they feel incredibly unnoticed, overlooked, and underfunded. My current principal, Dr. Frank Wood, is an exception. He has made a point to allow our students to report freely, and he often points out their efforts at Graduation ceremonies, school spirit assemblies, and more. He includes our journalism students with the top-rated sports teams when he makes public note of how great our school is."

"ASNE instructors at Kent State came up with a check list of characteristics of a good grading system that might be useful to teachers of all temperaments and organizational abilities. Consider these guidelines:"

"One of the greatest challenges of any design job is choosing the font. With this poster, all you need to do is answer a few simple questions, and you'll know the perfect typeface for the job! The large 18"x12" flowchart is printed on high-quality, matte paper, and can be pinned up near your work area as a guide for all of your typographical decisions."

"Instructors from four universities - University of Oregon, Arizona State, Texas State and Temple - taught solutions journalism last year with support from SJN. We approached the courses differently, including interweaving solutions journalism into existing intermediate reporting and as a digital short course. Links to our syllabi and some of our other course materials are on the SJN website here."

"Exercise 3: Writing Basic News Leads INSTRUCTIONS: Write only a lead for each of the following stories. As always, correct errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation and AP style if necessary. Consult the directory in your textbook for the correct spelling of names used in the scenarios."

Students not only learned about the inner workings of journalism and presidential campaigns, they saw the importance of civic engagement and our democratic process. The students' experiences highlight the importance of creating a new generation of engaged citizens, while emphasizing the essential role of journalism in advancing an inclusive civic dialogue. That's what creating a strong democracy is all about."

"Visme offers a new level of design capabilities for infographics and presentations.  For print publications a Premium account is required to download high resolution PDFs, which does run $175 per year. Overall the program is very well designed to create infographics and presentations with more options than most other infographic makers.  In an intuitive way the online program works with templates, themes and layers to allow users to create infographics and presentations.  It felt similar to combining Photoshop with other infographic makers. "We have a number (of benefits over their competitors): We are true presentation and infographic tool. you can do both. Most tools only allow one and ones that do allow both lack features on one or the other. You can also embed anything from third parties, embed maps, forms, surveys, etc. from third parties  Add video and upload/record audio right inside visme - animate any object and add interactivity (such as rollovers, pop-ups, links to sites)," Paymay Tae, Founder of Visme, said."

"Here, you'll find detailed lessons covering every aspect of your SNO Site and more; from basic site design to best journalism practices, we've got you covered. Feel free to click through our strands and read through each module - you'll be a SNO Site Wizard in no time."