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The Great Divide:
High School Newspapers and Advisers
in Chicago and the Metropolitan Area
Linda Jones
Associate Professor of Journalism
Roosevelt University
430 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, Ill. 60605
(312) 341-3813
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Submitted to the Scholastic Journalism Division
of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
April 1, 1997.
The Great Divide:
High School Newspapers and Advisers
in Chicago and the Metropolitan Area
Linda Jones
Associate Professor of Journalism
Roosevelt University
430 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, Ill. 60605
(312) 341-3813
[log in to unmask]
Submitted to the Scholastic Journalism Division
of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
April 1, 1997.
ABSTRACT
The Great Divide:
High School Newspapers and Advisers
in Chicago and the Metropolitan Area
This paper draws on a telephone survey of Chicago high school newspaper advisers
and a mail survey of high school newspapers in Chicago suburbs to compare
adviser experience, newspaper and journalism program profiles, media support for
papers, limits to student expression and paper's relative viability. Distinct
differences emerge between the city and suburbs.
Preliminary results from my telephone survey of Chicago high school newspaper
advisers were reported in a paper presented at the AEJMC convention in August
1996. This current paper, using mailed surveys returned since the earlier paper
was submitted, focuses on comparison between high school newspapers advisers in
the city and suburbs. Only city data were reported earlier.
Censorship "incidents" in Chicago public schools often are widely reported
media events. In May 1996, 2,000 copies of the school paper at Whitney Young
High School, a respected magnet school, were seized by the principal. The
principal said she wanted to shield students from a logo resembling gang
graffiti and a teacher from an editorial bashing. Students said the problem
was, instead, a letter to the editor from a lesbian student. [1]
In 1993, a Hubbard High School senior was suspended for criticizing her
principal's decision to ban shorts during hot spring days, then arrested in
front of TV cameras when she showed up at an awards ceremony during her
suspension.2
Controversies like these burn brightly -- but briefly. Mark Goodman,
executive director of the Student Press Law Center, observed that professional
journalists in such cases appear to view student journalists as nothing more
than "feature material" 3 -- valuable for a day's story and nothing more.
In fact, serious consideration of the state of the city's high school
newspapers has been largely ignored since 1992, when extracurricular activities,
including newspapers, were "saved" by a community fund-raising effort. Editor &
Publisher reported at the time that school newspapers were in "a pathetic
state."4
Since then, long-time advisers have taken early retirement as part of a
statewide early retirement program. New advisers with little or no experience
struggle to produce even monthly papers. Experienced advisers find themselves
struggling, too, after the public schools' elimination of the study halls they
had used as reporting and production time for their staffs. Journalism courses
are cut. Budgets are trimmed -- or eliminated. And recently, morale hit a new
low when more than 30 public high schools put on probation last fall for their
poor test scores learned that principals and faculties may be removed if
schools' scores do not improve by the end of the probation year.
The Chicago Public Schools, termed the worst in the nation by Reagan-era
education secretary William Bennett, certainly have fundamental problems that
take priority over an activity viewed as "extra," the student newspaper. And, in
times like these, principals' tolerance for student expression on even seemingly
innocuous issues can be limited. Advisers, seemingly resigned to their fate,
tell tales of principals forbidding "negative" stories about losing sports
teams or of schools with institutionalized censorship boards.
While Chicago has a quality citywide newspaper called New Expression that
offers an uncensored outlet for motivated young journalists, this paper is
viewed as competition by some newspaper advisers. Journalism workshops such as
the Chicago Association of Black Journalists' Exposure program and the Chicago
Association of Hispanic Journalists' Presente program have offered journalism
training, but the common denominator for all of these is the fact that they take
good students out of their schools and away from their "home" newspapers.
The question raised by these circumstances is simply whether Chicago's
public school newspapers are on track to survive or fail. To determine the
answer, this research will explore the status of the city's public school
newspapers, comparing them both to the private schools that share the same urban
environment and to the suburban schools that surround the city.
Literature review
Death by Cheeseburger, the 1994 Freedom Forum publication exploring the
state of high school journalism, offered 12 steps for improving high school
journalism programs, including such items as:
y Monthly publication (at least).
y Well-equipped school newsrooms.
y Adequate funding.
y Well-trained journalism teachers.
y Administrators who recognize the value of student expression.
y Moral and material support from professional news media.5
Death by Cheeseburger thus provides a checklist of sorts for healthy
publications. Michael Jordan and Ken Waters of Pepperdine University took this
checklist a step further when they established a definition of strong papers
(those published weekly, biweekly or monthly) and analyzed such papers to learn
their common characteristics. They found that such papers average 10 pages, had
advisers with more journalism training and an average of nine years advising
experience, had larger budgets and sold more advertising. 6
Mary Arnold in 1993 studied the problems of urban high school newspapers,
determining that 85 percent of them continued to publish, despite small budgets,
tougher graduation requirements and a non-reading student body. But she also
expressed concern at the pace at which student papers were stopping publication:
Nearly 90 percent of those that had shut down had done so within five years of
her study. In addition, the remaining papers could not be generally
characterized as thriving, since two-thirds published less than monthly.7
Arnold recommended several models of media and university journalism program
programs that have reinvigorated high school newspaper programs.
Little information has been gathered specifically to chart Chicago schools'
current state, however. A 1991 report on Chicago high school journalism
programs said that all but two of the city's 65 public high schools and 29 of 47
private schools had school papers.8 In addition, 46 of the 65 public high
schools offered journalism courses as of October 1990.9 A non-random group of
newspaper advisers said their most urgent need was to improve students'
motivation and writing and editing skills. The same group said their second
most-urgent need was for better equipment, particularly computers.10
A year later, in 1992, four public high schools were found to have no newspaper.
11
Methodology
All 280 public and private high schools in the Chicago metropolitan area were
contacted either by mail or telephone for this survey.
The 114 city schools were called between Feb. 22, 1996, and March 22, 1996, to
determine whether the school published a newspaper and, if so, the adviser's
name; the adviser then was telephoned directly for the survey interview, a
process requiring as many as 10 return calls in some cases. Four advisers
eventually responded to surveys mailed to them after the initial round of phone
calls.
The completion rate for the city is detailed in Table 1:
table 1: survey completion rate
# schools schools w/o papers responses completion rate
Public schools 66 9 (13%) 46 72%
Private schools 48 17(35%) 28 90%
TOTALS 114 26(23%) 74 84%
Advisers for the 166 suburban schools were mailed copies of the same survey in
March 1996. The list used for the telephone and mail contacts was compiled by
the university's Urban Journalism Center and cross-checked with publications
from the Illinois State Board of Education.
For suburban schools, the overall completion rate was 42 percent, with 70
surveys returned from 166 mailed. Although nonrespondents were sent a followup
reminder, no attempt was made to call each high school to determine if it had a
viable newspaper. Among the papers responding, 56 were public schools and 14
were private schools.
A census survey was conducted for the city schools in an attempt to gain as
complete a data set as possible. No complete set has been available, and the
author believes none has been done previously. Conducting a similar census in
the suburbs as well was too large an undertaking for the author, however. As a
compromise, the combination of phone and mail surveys at least allows a
previously-impossible comparison among schools within the metropolitan area.
The questionnaire
The survey consisted of 74 items, which translated to a telephone interview of
from 20 to 30 minutes per adviser. The items included:
Newspaper questions asking about the paper's equipment, publication
schedule, number of pages and budget. These have been used in analyzing
the papers' strength.
Responsibility questions have been analyzed to determine the
"ownership" of the newspaper by establishing student and adviser roles in
their production.
Adviser questions asking about demographics, journalism education and
experience and problems with the newspaper were used as variables in
analyzing differences among the papers.
First Amendment questions, mainly drawn from a survey reported by
Dvorak, Lain and Dickson in Journalism Kids Do Better, have been used to
compare Chicago metropolitan high schools to schools surveyed nationally.
Media questions were designed to determine professional media
interest and activity in the newspapers.
Findings: newspapers' strength, city vs. suburbs
Using Jordan and Waters' definition of "strong" student newspapers as those
that publish at least monthly, the 144 newspapers were categorized either as
"weak," those publishing one to four times annually; "moderately healthy,"
those publishing five to nine times annually; or "strong," those publishing 10
or more times annually .
Significantly more suburban schools fall in the "strong" category, as shown
in Table 2 below. Only six city schools, less than one newspaper of every 10,
can be categorized as strong. In the suburbs, 23 papers -- nearly one of every
three newspapers -- were categorized as strong. At the other end of the scale,
14 city newspapers were categorized as "weak," but just five suburban papers
fell into that category.
table 2: strength of school newspapers
city vs. suburbs
weak moderately healthy strong
City 14 (18.9%) 54 (73%) 6 (8.1%)
Suburbs 5 (7.1%) 42 (43.8%) 23 (32.9%)*
TOTALS 19(13.2%) 96 (66.7%) 29 (20.1%)
*statistically significant at p<.05.
Analyzing the entire sample showed that, overall, the stronger papers are
significantly more likely to be associated with:
y Advisers who became interested in advising during their own high school
years.
y Experienced advisers, defined as those with five or more years'
experience.
y Advisers with more journalism education, specifically Journalism
Education Association certification and undergraduate degrees in
journalism.
y Staffs that average 25 students (about 25 percent larger than the
average staff of the weaker papers).
y Budgets of $10,000 or more annually.
Other factors: city vs. suburbs
Not all of these conditions that appeared linked with papers' strength were
found uniformly in all areas, however. Suburban newspapers with experienced
advisers were significantly more likely to be strong papers, as were papers with
advisers who became interested in advising during their own high school years.
Those who never considered advising until asked to do it had significantly
weaker papers. In the city, however, advisers with more journalism education and
those who became interested in advising during high school had stronger papers,
but adviser experience did not appear to be linked with the paper's strength.
The status of journalism in the curriculum, either as a required or elective
course or as an extracurricular activity, also was not statistically related to
a newspaper's strength.
Public vs. private. Further analysis showed a statistically significant
difference between public and private schools in the suburban sample, as shown
in Table 3. In the city, however, no significant difference was found between
public and private schools.
table 3: strength of school newspapers
PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE
weak/moderately healthy strong
City public 42 (91.3%) 4 (8.7%)
City private 26 (92.9%) 2 (7.1%)
Suburban public 34 (60.7%) 22 (39.3%)
Suburban private 13 (92.9%) 1 (7.1%)
students' responsibility. For the entire sample, increased student
responsibility in duties related to the paper was linked in a statistically
significant way with stronger newspapers. This held true when students were
responsible for their papers' editing, photos and graphics, layout, desktop
publishing work, story assignments, content decisions and management. In the
suburbs, this link held for all the tasks listed above except layout. But in the
city, this was not the case. In fact, analysis showed only one statistically
significant connection between responsibility and papers' strength in the city,
and it was the antithesis of the suburban link: When advisers alone were
responsible for content decisions, city newspapers were likely to publish more
frequently. In other categories, although increased student responsibility
yielded a slightly higher average in the strength scale, none was statistically
significant.
Findings: journalism programs
Clear differences emerged between Chicago's school newspapers and the city's
suburban counterparts, as shown in Table 4.
table 4: newspaper profiles
all city city pub. citypvt. all sub. sub pub. sub pvt.
Budget $3,765# $3,487 $4,107 $5,844 $6,335 * $3,919
Issues/year 6.3# 6.2 6.4 8.4 8.8 6.5
Yrs pub. 35.3 32.0 41.4 33.6 36.7 25.8
Pages/issue 11.0 8.9 14.4 11.4 11.6 10.4
Staff size 19.5# 17.2 * 23.2 23.6 25.3 * 16.8
Minority % 44.0%# 50.1% 32.4% 11.4% 12.6%* 5.8%
Strength 1.9 1.87 1.92 2.25 2.33 * 1.91
The strength rating is determined by frequency of publication. A paper published
10 or more times annually was rated a "3." A paper publishing between five and
nine times was rated a "2." A paper publishing four times or less was rated a
"1."
* statistically significant (p<.05) between public and private schools in same
area.
# statistically significant (p<.05) between city and suburbs.
As shown, the average budget for papers in the city, although only 27
advisers could provide a figure, was about $3,765, more than $2,000 less than
the average suburban budget, $5,844. City schools relied much more heavily on
activity fees collected from students: about one of every five city advisers
said activity fees were the paper's most important source of money, a figure
that is 12 times the number of suburban programs supported by such funds. Twice
as many suburban schools as city schools also sold advertising.
Most programs have at least a semblance of the equipment needed to run a
school paper, as shown in Table 5, but statistically significant differences
were clear between the urban and suburban newspapers. City school papers were
significantly less likely to have computers (all eight advisers who reported not
having computers work in the city), laser printers, an office or phone for the
newspaper, or access to the Internet.
table 5: newspapers' equipment
city suburban
*Computers 89% 100%
Camera 76% 74%
Laser printer 72% 91%
Desktop publishing software 77% 89%
*Office 58% 77%
*Phone 39% 77%
Scanner 45% 51%
*Internet access 20% 39%
n=74 n=70
* Statistically significant (p<.05)
And, unlike many suburban journalism programs that offer more than one and
sometimes as many as six journalism courses, most city students have at most a
single journalism course available to them. More than four of every 10 city
schools had no journalism course. That means that production of the paper was
entirely an extracurricular activity, a situation faced by only one in four
suburban advisers.
Findings: adviser profiles
Although about the same percentage of advisers in the city and suburbs held
journalism degrees, further analysis disclosed a statistically significant
difference between public- and private-school advisers in the city, as shown in
Table 6.
table 6: adviser profiles
all city city pub citypvt all sub sub pub sub pvt
Years teaching 15.1 16.6 12.5 14.6 14.0 16.7
Years advising 8.1 8.0 8.3 8.2 8.6 6.5
Age 43.1 44.0 41.6 42.0 41.2 45.0
% minority 14.9# 21.7 3.6 2.9 3.6 0
% female 54.1# 56.5 50.0 71.4 69.6 78.6
Journalism degrees 27.4 17.8 * 42.9 27.0 30.6 14.3
Has written for pub. 79.5 75.6 85.7 69.4 73.5 53.8
No interest/asked 50.7 61.4 32.0 29.0 25.5 42.9
* statistically significant (p<.05) between public and private schools in
city.
# statistically significant (p<.05) between city and suburbs
More than four of 10 private-school advisers had either undergraduate or
graduate degrees in journalism. In the suburbs, no such statistically
significant relationship existed. The city and suburban advisers also differed
significantly in terms of gender and race, but were nearly identical in age and
years of teaching experience.
City advisers were significantly more likely to say that their biggest
problems are student apathy, the quality of students' writing and a lack of
stories, as shown in Table 7,. Suburban advisers' biggest problem, the quality
of students' writing, was mentioned by three of every 10 suburban advisers --
but by more than four of every 10 city advisers. City advisers also said they
are plagued by a lack of stories, but that was one of the least-mentioned items
among suburban advisers.
Table 7: advisers' problems
City Suburbs
Cost/np 10% 13%
Administration 14% 10%
Discipline 3% 1%
Apathy* 46% 20%
Student computer ed. 18% 20%
Lack of equipment 27% 17%
Quality of writing* 45% 31%
Lack of stories* 26% 10%
Size of staff 19% 14%
Teacher computer ed. 16% 14%
Time with students 34% 30%
* statistically significant (p<.05)
Findings: student responsibilities
Suburban advisers have entrusted most of the tasks crucial to publishing
the newspaper to their students, as befits a student publication. City advisers,
however, have not.
City advisers were significantly more likely than suburban advisers to say
that they, not the students, had "primary responsibility" for four important
areas: editing, layout, desktop publishing and managing the paper, as shown in
Table 8.
table 8 : responsibilities
City Suburbs
Editing* 1.01 1.32
Photos/graphics 1.59 1.59
Layout* 1.13 1.65
Writing 1.97 1.94
Desktop publishing* 1.25 1.58
Assigning stories 1.34 1.52
Deciding content 1.47 1.46
Managing paper* 0.69 1.23
* statistically significant (p<.05)
A higher score indicates more responsibility entrusted to students. If an
adviser said students had the main responsibility for a task, the score was 2.
If the teacher and the students shared responsibility, the score was 1. If the
teacher handled the task alone, the score was 0.
Further analysis disclosed significant differences, in addition, between
public- and private- school advisers in the city, with private-school advisers
reporting that their students held significantly more responsibility than was
reported by public-school advisers.
Additional analyses by demographic variables such as age, race, gender,
journalism background and teaching and advising experience yielded no
significant explanations for the differences between advisers' responses. But
analyzing the "primary responsibility" responses by Q35, which asked if the
principal read the paper before it was published, disclosed that:
y When a principal did not read the paper before its publication, students
were nearly eight times as likely to be entrusted with editing their
paper.
y When a principal did not read the paper before its publication, students
were nearly five times more likely to be the ones deciding content of
the
paper.
y When a principal did not read the paper before its publication, students
were nearly four times more likely to have the role of assigning
stories
for the paper.
In the classroom, suburban advisers reported spending significantly more time
teaching writing and photos and graphics than suburban advisers did, as shown in
Table 9.
table 9: teaching time
city suburbs
*Writing 2.9 2.7
Reporting 2.6 2.6
Layout 1.8 1.9
*Photos/Graphics 1.7 1.5
Computers 1.8 1.9
First Amendment 1.8 2.0
* Statistically significant (p<.05)
The scale for teaching time was this: A response of "a great deal" yielded 3
points; a response of "some" yielded 2 points; and a response of "not much"
yielded 0 points. The higher the scale, the more time spent teaching the topic.
Findings: First Amendment issues
Fifteen questions on First Amendment issues that attempted to determine the
levels of censorship by principals, by advisers and by students found few
significant differences between city and suburban schools, as shown in Table 10.
Among principals:
y Fewer than one in five in the metropolitan area had stopped editorials
or
stories from running in school papers.
y About three of every 10 principals had ordered changes to stories or
editorials
before they could be published.
y About one principal in five read the school newspaper before its
publication.
table 10: first amendment questions (principal)
u.s. chicago suburbs
The Principal ...
reads paper < publication
never 64% 73% 82%
at least sometimes 36% 27% 18%
has stopped editorial*
yes (37%) 16% 16%
no (63%) 84% 84%
has stopped story
yes (37%) 19% 23%
no (63%) 81% 76%
has ordered changes
yes (37%) 24% 31%
no (63%) 76% 66%
* In the national survey, this was reported as part of a three-part question
("Has the principal stopped an editorial or story from running or ordered
changes in a story before it could be publish?") The national percentages
compared to each of the three parts here reflect that question.
No clear patterns on "who censors?" emerged from further analysis by
variables such as the adviser's experience, the adviser's journalism education
or publication experience, the adviser's work with his/her own high school
newspaper and the adviser's race and gender.
As for the advisers themselves:
y A little more than a third reported having withheld editorials and
stories.
y Most generally did not send the paper to the printer without editors
first seeing copy the adviser has changed; almost one of five
advisers
said they had changed copy and sent it on without editors' OK.
y Nearly nine of every 10 advisers said they typically do the final edit
at least sometimes.
table 11: first amendment questions (advisers)
u.s. city suburbs
The Adviser ...
reads paper < publication
never 5% 0 0
at least sometimes 95% 100% 100%
does final edit
never * 12% 6%
at least sometimes * 88% 94%
has withheld editorial
yes 35% 37% 41%
no 65% 61% 57%
has withheld story
yes 30% 34% 37%
no 70% 66% 61%
has changed copy/sent in
yes 29% 18% 16%
no 71% 81% 83%
* This question was not asked in the national survey.
Again, none of the demographic variables gathered on the advisers, including
age, race, gender, journalism background or high school newspaper experience,
established any profile of an adviser who would censor.
table 12: first amendment questions (students)
u.s chicago suburbs
Students Have ...
held off on story because of fear of adviser objections
never 35% 95% 91%
at least once in a while 65% 6% 7%
withheld editorial on own*
never 74% 91% 65%
at least once in a while 26% 9% 35%
withheld stories for fear of censorship
never 58% 85% 74%
at least once in a while 42% 15% 26%
held story "too negative" on school*
never # 87% 66%
at least once in a while 13% 34%
held story "too negative" on community*
never # 97% 90%
at least once in a while 3% 10%
* statistically significant between city and suburbs (p<.05)
# question was not asked in national survey.
As seen in Table 12 above, city advisers reported significantly less
self-censorship by their students than was reported by their suburban and
national counterparts:
y About one in 10 city advisers reported that their staff members had
withheld a controversial editorial, compared with one of three
suburban
advisers who said their students had self-censored.
y About one in 10 city advisers said their staff members had withheld a
controversial story, again compared with about one of three suburban
advisers who reported this.
y About three times as many suburban students as city students were
reported to have withheld a story or editorial because they thought
it
presented too negative a picture of their school.12
Findings: media affiliations
Because the Death By Cheeseburger report emphasized the key role commercial
newspapers must play in nurturing high school papers, advisers were asked
whether they had affiliations with media organizations or had received grants
from media companies or foundations.
Although city schools were six times as likely as suburban schools to have
received grants, the 12 schools receiving grants included about a half-dozen
schools for whom the "grant" was a refurbished Canon camera offered through the
Chicago Public Schools.
Most schools, whether urban or suburban, said they had no continuing
affiliations with media companies or professional journalists. Schools like one
city public school that receives multiple grants and won favorable mention in
Death by Cheeseburger are the exception.
Conclusion: clear differences, no clear solutions
In simple numbers, newspapers in Chicago appear at least as healthy as those in
other urban areas. About 13 percent of the public high schools have no paper,
which compares favorably to Arnold's 1993 determination that 85 percent of urban
high schools had viable papers. Like her research, this survey also found a
disturbing trend: More than half of the newspapers that have ceased publication
have done so recently. In 1991, all but two public high schools in Chicago had
newspapers; now there are nine without them.
And an overall look at the relative strength of city school newspapers is not
encouraging. Almost 20 percent of the papers are classified as "weak," meaning
they publish four times or less each year. Only 7 percent of suburban school
newspapers are classified as weak.
The research also shows that city newspapers differ dramatically from their
suburban counterparts. They have substantially less money to work with. They are
less likely to be strong newspapers that publish at least monthly and bring a
semblance of current news to their readers. They have smaller staffs. Their
students are not primarily responsible for major chunks of the operation:
editing, layout, desktop publishing or managing the paper. And half of their
advisers acknowledge they had no interest in advising until they were asked to
do it.
Chicago Public School newspapers also differ dramatically in important ways from
private-school newspapers inside the city -- their neighbors, in effect.
Private-school advisers are significantly more likely to have had journalism
education than their public-school city peers. These advisers are more likely to
give their students responsibility for two of the most important jobs at the
paper: editing and layout. In fact, private-school advisers are almost as likely
as suburban advisers to give their students primary responsibility for these two
tasks, as Table 13 shows:
table 13: key responsibilities compared
city public city private suburban
Editing* .80 1.3 1.32
Layout* .9 1.5 1.65
A higher score indicates more responsibility entrusted to students. For
elaboration, see Table 8.
* statistically significant (p<.05)
And, while city public and private schools publish about the same number of
papers in a year, private-school papers are clearly more substantial, running
almost 15 pages per issue compared with nine for city schools.
If the stakes were not so high, it would be tempting to simply write these
differences off to yet another result of the decline of public education.
Journalists in particular, whose efforts at recruiting minorities to
publications and to providing increasingly diverse coverage to their communities
are well-documented, cannot afford to allow urban youths -- often already
alienated from politics and media -- to mature without ever experiencing the
clear voice that a student newspaper can provide.
Final thoughts: Just whose paper is this, anyway?
John Reque, a newspaper adviser for more than 25 years, tries to impress upon
new advisers that they should carefully consider their own role with the student
newspaper.
Think about the basketball coach, he tells them. The basketball coach runs the
practices, helps the players work on their skills, demands hard practice from
them -- but when it comes time for the game, he stays on the bench. He doesn't
go out and shoot free throws. No one expects him to. 13
The advisers always smile and nod, agreeing that the image of a basketball
coach taking a free throw is pretty ridiculous. But some of Reque's advisers
were among city advisers surveyed for this research. Why would a newspaper
adviser, in effect, not only shoot free throws but dunk as well?
These same city advisers -- not their students -- are significantly more likely
than their suburban counterparts to perform the editing, layout, desktop
publishing and management work for the paper. The responsibility for the end
product thus lies with the advisers, not the students.
The lack of responsibility city students have in significant areas may play into
the apparent lack of self-censorship found in the city schools when they are
compared with suburban and national schools. Are city students less likely to
withhold stories or editorials because they are not given the opportunity to do
so? Is their role in the final product that of contributors, but not creators or
editors?
Advisers seemed to acknowledge this in anecdotal responses to the survey as they
were interviewed. Repeatedly, advisers in city schools would say that a story
"wouldn't get to that point" when asked if students had ever withheld a story or
editorial.
City advisers might argue that the quality of students' writing is such that
they must edit the paper themselves; they would argue, as the research does,
indeed, show, that city advisers spend significantly more time teaching writing
than suburban advisers do -- a clear indication that their problems are more
basic. They would undoubtedly also point out that student apathy is much more a
problem in city schools than it is in suburban ones, and the research confirms
that, too.
But this question remains: What is a student newspaper supposed to be? Is it
meant to be a student activity only when the students are talented and eager to
write for it? And if the students aren't so talented and maybe don't care too
much about journalism, is it best to just forget the "student" part of the
newspaper and let teachers do it?
If this were simply a student activity, that might be a valid answer. But the
student newspaper is one of the few opportunities in high schools for students
to exercise their rights as citizens.
Martinson has observed that public schools generally "have little if any effect
on teaching of the democratic creed. 14 And Merelman goes so far as to say there
is a "hidden curriculum" in high schools that is basically authoritarian and
prevents worthwhile teaching about democracy.15
Advisers' willingness to shoulder the most important tasks of the newspaper and,
in the process, muddy the waters for true student expression, is troubling. By
doing so, they seem to say that their students can't -- or won't -- do the hard
work of learning how to effectively and responsibly exercise their rights to
expression.
[1]
Footnotes
1. Martinez, Michael, "Whitney Young Principal Seizes School Newspapers; Gay
Group Condemns Action as Censorship, Chicago Tribune, May 22, 1996, p. 8.
2, Jones, Linda, "Reporters Miss 'Real Story' When Student Journalists Is
Suspended, Then Arrested," Chicago Journalist, July-August 1993, p. 1.
3. Jones, p. 10.
4. Fitzgerald, Mark, "Saved -- For Now," Editor & Publisher, 125:50 (Dec. 12,
1992), p. 15.
5. Death by Cheeseburger: High School Journalism in the 1990s and Beyond,
Arlington, Va.: The Freedom Forum, 1994. pp. 147-148.
6. Jordan, Michael, and Waters, Ken, "Scholastic Journalism in California: A
Blueprint for Improvement," presented to the Association for Education in
Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Convention, August 1996, Anaheim,
Calif., p. 12.
7. Arnold, Mary, "Inner City High School Newspapers: An Obituary?" presented to
the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, August 1993,
Kansas City, Mo.
8. Robbins, Neal E., "Status Report on School Journalism," Report on the
Conference on School Journalism in Chicago, Roosevelt University, Chicago, March
7, 1991, p. 6.
9. Robbins, p. 6, quoting the Chicago Public Schools Language Arts Division.
10. Robbins, p. 6, quoting questionnaires completed by Chicago high school
teachers attending workshops between 1988 and 1991 offered by Roosevelt
University's Multicultural Journalism Center.
11.Jones, Linda, "High School Newspaper Advisers in Chicago Public Schools,"
unpublished research, December 1992.
12. One methodological difference is important to note here: City advisers were
interviewed by
telephone, while suburban advisers responded by mail. It's possible that
advisers' responses
involve some kind of "interviewer effect" that prompted them to underestimate
the instances of
self-censorship by their students. This would seem unlikely, however, because
responses from the
advisers were so similar otherwise, even on issues involving themselves and
their own acts of
censorship.
13. John Reque, director, Teaching High School Journalists program for
advisers, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University. Personal
observation of the author.
14. Martinson, David L., "An Open Letter to Public School Administrators:
Student Newspapers: Do Them Right or Don't Do Them At All," Quill & Scroll, 68:3
(February/March 1994), p. 4.
15. Merelman, Richard M., "Democratic Politics and the Culture of American
Education," American Political Science Review, 1980, 74: p. 324.
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