Student journalists hit the blogosphere
While few high school journalists are blogging, those online are preparing for the future of communications
Originally published in the Winter 2011 edition of the Dow Jones Newsfund's Adviser Update
Fifteen years ago, no one had ever heard of a blog. In 1995, writer Carolyn Burke created Carolyn’s Diary, credited by most as the first. What made it a blog was that it was organized in a “roll” with new entries stacking on old and forever pushing previous material further and further down in the pages. By early 2010, the website Technorati (http://technorati.com) estimated that there were over 112 million blogs on the Internet.
Certainly, the vast majority of these do not qualify as journalism. Communications teachers today, however, cannot afford to minimize the importance of the blog as a tool their students will have to master as they join the global digital mediastream our profession will inhabit in the future. Put simply, future journalists will blog as part of their jobs. Forward thinking teachers are pushing their students onto the blogosphere today to prepare them.
One of the primary purposes of blogging is to extend the content of the in-school student press and to allow students to express themselves beyond what is possible in traditional publications. In the “Be Heard” section of their website (http://fhctoday.com/beheard), the journalism students at Francis Howell Central High School in St. Charles, Missouri pursue both goals.
The top page lists the latest posts of the site’s five dedicated bloggers (as well as occasional contributions by others on the staff). A link at the top takes you to their active bloggers by name - allowing users to look at blogs based on most recent posting, or to see only those of the writer they’re interested in. Specific bloggers focus on eating and health (Kyle Braden), popular music (Anna Gingrich), humanity (Brendan Kinnison), being a senior (Cory Schmitt), and skin care (Victoria Walker). These may seem like narrow topics, but all of them are focuses of teen interest and are, therefore, good subjects for teen blogs.
The Manual Redeye, published by the students at duPont Manual High School in Louisville, Kentucky, is a super active all around exciting high school website (http://www.manualredeye.com). It incorporates print news, podcasts and dedicated blogs under the site’s “Opinion” link. Three dedicated bloggers create blogs on movies(“Basement Films” by Sean Strain), an Arab American view (“From Falafel to Freedom” principally by Marianna Michael), and sports opinion (“Soap Box” mainly by Shelby Dixon). The blogs give duPont manual students a solid forum for expressing the specific interests and ideas of not only the writers, but through them their fellow Kentucky students.
Fresno Christian School allows members of its publication staff to explore specific topics in blogs on The Feather website (http://www.thefeather.com). The site includes a terrific blog on growing up as a modern teenage girl by Sydney Carlson and Jessica Massie called “Becoming Me.” It also includes “Confessions of an Anglophile” about all things British by Mary Hierholzer and the music blog “Playlist: Untitled” by Nick Avery. Altogether, their entries express the views of modern teens on subjects only they could have picked.
Some schools have focused blogs not on individual streams of thought, but on rolls that allow the whole staff to express their thoughts on issues occurring between publication deadlines. Silver Chips Online (http://silverchips.mbhs.edu), created by the journalism students at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Springs, Maryland, is a nationally award winning site that divides its blogs into five subjects - the News Blog, Sports Blog, Lifestyle Blog, Connections Blog and Spanish Blog. The first three are fairly self-explanatory. The Connections Blog, however, focuses on how Blair students relate to their community and world (and is very interesting), and the Spanish Blog is written by and for Spanish speaking students.
Under each heading, various members of the staff cover whatever topic seems appropriate at the time. Collectively, the five blogs allow students to express themselves and to cover news that might not have fit into their print publication or which might have fallen outside proscribed deadlines. Here, blogs empower the students to cover all of their world, not just what fits in a traditional, albeit award-winning, newspaper.
The Broadcast Video II and III classes at Cedar Crest High School in Lebanon, Pennsylvania create a constantly updated video and written blog as a method of publishing their content (http://journaling.clsd.net/ccnn/). With all video linked to the guaranteed safe SchoolTube.com, the site offers students, teachers and parents an easy way to access the class’ work.
The school’s daily announcements are featured in a permanent link on the right side of the page which teachers at the school can access for projection in the classroom. In the center of the page are the ten most recently posted stories. Click on the links and you are taken to a SchoolTube page for a full frame view of the story. At press time, these included stories on Online Relationships, Poetry Out Loud finalists, and a look at what is going on at nearby Cornwall Elementary School filled with shots of cute kids happy to have the high schoolers stop by.
Truthfully, my online survey of student journalism blogs indicates that only a minority of us are guiding our students onto the blogosphere. Contact from some teachers indicated that they are either not permitted to publish student blogs or fear doing so. I understand this. Such policies and fears, however, are shortsighted. The truth is that we are not really preparing our students for the communications world of the future if we are not pushing them to blog and to express themselves in that global digital mediastream flowing through the air all around us.
Gary Clites’ students blog at http://patriotpress.edublogs.org.
Approximately 950 words
© Gary Clites 2010