Being a reporter can mean many things to our society. A reporter can be someone who is physically on television investigating who then shares facts to an audience. It can be a person who is doing behind the scenes work on a story or it could be someone who posts information and updates about a topic on social media.
A reporter can be just about anyone these days, especially students.
While I do pride myself on being a student reporter, I know there are many others around me and even more that will follow me. With the way our society is currently, it is natural for us to become curious about our surroundings and who better to trust than ourselves to figure out to the truth.
Although I am not a perfect student or reporter, I feel like the work each and every student reporter does is dramatically shaping our world for the better every day.
One article by The Nation, William Anderson (who is also a student journalist*) argues that news outlets across the globe need to start taking student reporters seriously. The work we do is credible, valid and accurate - something many outlets often struggle with.
(* - Just to preface, I will be using "journalist" and "reporter" interchangeably throughout this blog post. Technically, all reporters are journalists but not all journalists are reporters. In the examples I use, each reporter is a journalist and vice versa.)
In the article, Anderson said "student journalists are uniquely positioned to fill the hole created by the decline of local news. When major news explodes on campuses and nearby communities, student journalists... are often the first on the scene." This is something I see happen more often than other stations or media outlets would like to attest to. Being at the University of Florida, I have been trained to be informed about the community around us in the Gainesville area as well as the surrounding counties. For some of our adjacent communities, we are their main or only news source. This allows our station to physically force us to be on top of the news or current events more than the larger station affiliates are able to.
By staying on top of things more efficiently, that allows us student reporters to find holes where other reporters and journalists often miss due to the lack of attention they are able to spend on each story. Sure we aren't getting paid for the work that we do, but instead we are paying the university to teach us the skills necessary to get a job. One of those skills is being very detail-oriented, to the point where we often find ourselves in an investigative story uncovering the truths about our community.
This brings me to an example of a group of journalists at Pittsburg High School in Pittsburg, Kansas. These students, who write for their school newspaper The Booster Redux, uncovered a major issue with their school principal: a lack in her job qualifications.
Originally, Maddie Baden, co-editor-in-chief for The Booster Redux, said they were trying to do an introduction piece on the principal of her school to share with the community. But as she and her team dug deeper to find more information on their principal, they noticed the college in which their principal attended wasn't a true or real university. This eventually lead to the resignation of the principal and a shocking reaction from the superintendant and school board for their county.
County officials were stunned that high schoolers were able to find out more information about the principal than they ever did. This goes to show that once student reporters find an unusual yet interesting detail, they won't let it go until answers are given. In this case, they did more work than the people that hired their principal.
In a segment of NPR's All Things Considered, one of the other students who worked on the story along side Baden said that the group of students knew they couldn't steer away from the fact that there was something wrong with the information they had gathered. The student said, "We knew that there was a story to be heard here, and that's exactly what our paper sought out to do."
And so, their story was ultimately shared on numerous media outlets such as NPR, CNN, CBS, NBC, and the Today Show. They too, were amazed at how tactful and diligent these high schoolers were in the work and truths they uncovered.
But because students are becoming smarter, more tactful and dedicated to their work and the details within each story, student journalists and reporters are pushing the boundaries set in place for them by their superiors. This is usually because students are now publishing more controversial and thought-provoking articles and stories.
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In the article tagged in Murphy's tweet, one high school junior named Gage Gramlick brought a bill to his state capitol in hopes of overturning a school administrator's power over student reporters. The bill, called House Bill 1242, would "prevent public primary and secondary school administrators form blocking news stories they fell could be unflattering, and provide protection for journalism teachers and student reporters."
School district officials opposed the bill as it would limit the authority school administrators would have.
This concern by student reporters was also seen in Utah. In an article by the New York Post, a group of student journalists wrote an article in their school's newspaper about a teacher of theirs who sent inappropriate texts to younger girls. Within 12 hours, school administrators had the article and newspaper website taken down. Students were angered by the action taken by the administrators and eventually posted the article on a new site in addition to a petition to end the censorship of student work. Students argued that administrators did not like the story as it didn't cast the school in a positive light.
I have experienced this issue of limitations first hand and is an issue many students across the nation face. When I was in high school, I was involved on both the t.v. production and yearbook staff. I can remember administrators cutting out huge sections from our articles or videos simply because they didn't agree with what we had written or said.
This concern by student reporters was also seen in Utah. In an article by the New York Post, a group of student journalists wrote an article in their school's newspaper about a teacher of theirs who sent inappropriate texts to younger girls. Within 12 hours, school administrators had the article and newspaper website taken down. Students were angered by the action taken by the administrators and eventually posted the article on a new site in addition to a petition to end the censorship of student work. Students argued that administrators did not like the story as it didn't cast the school in a positive light.
I have experienced this issue of limitations first hand and is an issue many students across the nation face. When I was in high school, I was involved on both the t.v. production and yearbook staff. I can remember administrators cutting out huge sections from our articles or videos simply because they didn't agree with what we had written or said.
But to me, isn't that what journalism is? To have stories that cause individuals to think and discover their opinions on certain topics. No story should favor one side over another, but should give a fair and sometimes unfavorable truth we have to live or deal with in our community.
Finally, I would like to go back to Anderson's article and why he said news outlets should treat student journalists fairly.
Student journalists and reporters see and understand things in ways older generations simply just aren't able to. Anderson said "journalists on college campuses are uniquely positioned to cover emerging social movements and to translate what young people are thinking to an older audience." This is so important, especially today. Our social and political climate changes at a rapid pace but the upcoming generation is the one who is going to have to deal with these issues. So shouldn't our news and information be explained in a way where they would be able to understand it?
The next time you see the work of a student journalist or reporter, I encourage you to reach out to them and thank them for the time they put in to produce the work or story they released. We put in a lot of time and dedication many don't see or expect from students. But as Anderson said, believe in us. Believe in student reporters and the work that we do. We have the power to really make an impact on our world.
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