Yet Another High School Newspaper Goes Online To Avoid District Censorship

from the control-is-a-funny-thing... dept

This is hardly the first time we've seen high school administrators try to censor the student newspaper because they were upset about article -- only to find the students simply moved over to the web and were able to get their message out to a much wider audience. The latest, coming to us via Romenesko, involves a student newspaper in Faribault, Minnesota. The superintendent got upset that the students wouldn't share the results of an investigative report before publishing it, and so he shut down the newspaper completely.

Without skipping a beat, the students set up shop online, entirely independent from the school (they even got a site that hosts student newspapers to give them free hosting). They'll continue to publish, but without support from the school (though, the teacher who was an adviser to the paper, will continue to informally advise the team). Basically, the students are realizing what plenty of others have discovered in the past: it's tough to shut people up these days, now that there's a big internet out there. The superintendent who shut them down doesn't seem to mind much either, saying: "It's well within their right. Any group of students could put together a website like that. That's the way life is in this electronic age." Of course, if that's the case, why did he bother shutting down the paper in the first place?

Filed Under: high school newspapers, newspapers

Are High School Newspapers Obsolete?

from the just-go-online dept

When I was in high school years ago, I was both an editor for the school newspaper and a co-founder/editor of an "underground" newspaper that a group of friends put together to compete with the official school newspaper (it probably won't surprise folks to find out my first article for the underground paper was an examination of why an underground newspaper is perfectly legal and can't be prevented by a school administration). Both experiences were quite useful (and fun), but with so much talk these days of the challenges facing the normal newspaper industry, is it worth it for high schools to still publish newspapers? After all, these days, students who want to report on what's going on in a school no longer need the "sanctioned" press, thanks to the internet.

What got me thinking about this was reading an article about a high school principal who decided to shut down the high school's newspaper (via Romenesko) after he got offended by an editorial on flag burning that included a photo of a student burning a flag. The whole thing seemed ridiculous -- because there's nothing to stop the students from taking the content, and putting it all online and not needing any stamp of approval from the school administration.

Obviously, there's something to be said for the learning experience that can be provided by working together on a project, and the potential mentoring of a school newspaper advisor (though if I remember correctly, our advisor didn't actually do much), but that could just as easily be done through other means, including classes/extra-curricular activities focusing on helping students create their own content for online purposes, rather than under the umbrella of any official school newspaper.

Filed Under: high school newspapers, newspapers