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| The newsroom at the The Washington Post. Photo credit: Burnt Pixel |
As I work through the processes,
procedures, rules, and guides for my new journalism classroom, I often wonder
where I might find the balance between telling my students what to do and
allowing them to join into the larger cultural conversation about “news.”
In Tuesday’s New York Times, Kelly
McBride offered her opinions of the ethics behind reporters paying sources for
information in "When It's O.K. to Pay for a Story." She cited WkiLeaks “initiative to crowd-source a $100,000 ‘bounty’ on the text of the
Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal” as an example of evolving journalistic
ethics. After reading this OpEd, I was struck by the thought that in addition
to teaching my students how to report the news, I will also have to teach them
about the news: what’s going on in the world of journalism, how any why people
are changing the way we source, deliver, and receive news, and how they fit into that
cultural shift.
When
I picture an “authentic newsroom,” one of the details that I always include is
lively and heated debate among reporters or between a reporter and an editor,
and I look forward to encouraging my students to engage in conversations where
there are no absolutes--about the angle of an article, the subject of an
article, the details to be included in an article but also the ways in which
professionals approach journalism--conversations that will allow them to
discover their own opinions and give them the confidence to lead rather than
just follow those processes, procedures, rules, and guides.
Carver Weakley
Cosby High School
Midlothian, Virginia
Establishing a classroom environment that encourages authentic dialogue is my number one goal and it is the reason why I continue to teach high school journalism.
ReplyDeleteInteresting take. One thing I had to drop from the program – with great regret – when our on-the-ground time went from two weeks to one week was a chat with Dan Gillmor, a Cronkite School faculty member who authored Mediactive (http://mediactive.com). Dan is all about helping people better understand the sources of their information. HIs book is available for free download by following the link above. One stated goal of these institutes is creating campus communities with a better idea of what are and aren't reliable sources of information subjected to journalistic scrutiny.
ReplyDeleteSteve Elliott
Arizona State University
Phoenix