HHS Media's Mission Statement
As student-run publications, HHS Media strives to tell the stories of our peers through fair and accurate reporting. We are a diverse group of student journalists led by student editors who aspire to inform and entertain our community in a timely manner. We hold ourselves to professional and ethical standards as we report the truth. Our publications operate as public forums that encourage community engagement. Overall, HHS Media aims to amplify the voices without bias because every person has a story; we just tell them.
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As journalists, we have a very important job, but also a very powerful one. We must always come back to the idea that our job is to report the unbiased truth and be a trusted news source for our student body and community.
Scholastic Journalism Week
Throughout Scholastic Journalism Week, we often use our Instagram platform the most to celebrate. However, we also provide students with the opportunity to memorize and recite the First Amendment in class for extra credit. This year one of our staff members also planned an in class activity for each day that week including LOTS of First Amendment themed baked goods.
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In the past we have scheduled a different topic under the umbrella of Scholastic Journalism Week to post about each day. We often spend multiple days on history. To the right are a few story posts I created detailing the court case of Tinker v. Des Moines.
These posts emphasize that it is not a small thing that we are able to operate the way we do on our staff. If it weren't for the First Amendment and many court cases like Tinker v. Des Moines, we would not be able to truly be a news organization in school. |
We have also in the past, used Scholastic Journalism Week to discuss careers in journalism and how skills learned on our staff can be applied to real world careers.
Joining HHS Media or being interested in journalism is so much more than just interviewing. Our newsroom is just about the closest you can get in high school to a real world career setting. It's almost impossible to leave the newsroom after a year, even as a freshman, without learning some form of a marketable skill, whether that be teamwork skills, leadership, sales or so many others. |
JEA First Amendment Press Freedom Award
We won the First Amendment Press Freedom Award last year for the first time since I have been on staff and I recently got to work closely with the application process to apply this year. The last time my staff was honored with this award was in 2017.
To fill out the application this year, I had to consider the ways in which my school administration impacts our job as student journalists. I recounted what it is we can and cannot publish, confirmed that our content is not reviewed before it is published and that we have never been told no when tackling a story idea. We are very lucky in that our administration respects our job as journalists to report on the student body and community. As long as we are doing this ethically and truthfully, we operate as a true news source without administrative approval or review. |
JMU Journalism Camp
I took a session called "Journalism Ethics & Censorship" taught by news media adviser Kelly Furnas from Elon University when I attended a JMU Journalism Camp this past summer. I signed up for this session for two reasons, firstly I thought the topic was important to know more about as a journalist and secondly, my staff has always struggled with knowing truly when we can and cannot use something that we did not create in our printed publications.
Some of my major takeaways from this session:
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The above hand out from the Society of Professional Journalists was passed out during this session as well. This was the first time I had seen this very prevalent list of rules put together. After J-Camp, I wanted to incorporate this hand out into my staff and provide a time to discuss it. I hope to do this more in depth during Scholastic Journalism Week.
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Another topic discussed was photo ethics.
My biggest takeaways:
My biggest takeaways:
- Plagiarism vs. Copyright
- Credit/ethics vs. legality/permission
- Forms of Copyright
- Licensed Work: must get permission
- Fair Use: depends on the nature of the work, nature of use, amount of work used & the impact on the value of the work
- Public Domain: work becomes public domain after 95 years after being published, so work published in 1928 fell into the public domain this year, 2023
- Work for Hire: being paid
- Creative Commons: do not have to ask for permission, just provide credit
Relationship with Administration
Last year at the JEA/NSPA conference in Los Angeles, CA, I gave the presentation to the right called "Cultivating relationships with your administration." We discussed ethical questions such as school speech vs. free speech, as well as what our relationship is like with our administration as we work to seek the truth and report it.
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Doing the research for this presentation taught me a lot. As a journalist we have a lot of power that comes with a lot of responsibility. I think it is important to learn about this responsibility to have some perspective of the history that we often glaze over. |