College Media Review

Printed revision and update for the style guide

Reviewed by Carolyn Schurr Levin

Originally a project of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism in San Francisco State University’s journalism department in the 1990s, the “Diversity Style Guide” was a collection of terms from other style guides that existed at the time. That original guide, which was available in PDF form but was never published, was updated and expanded into a searchable website, https://www.diversitystyleguide.com, in 2016. The goal of the website, which is still available and regularly updated, was to “make journalism more inclusive from the classroom to the newsroom.” The website offered “guidance, context and nuance for media professionals struggling to write about people who are different from themselves and communities different from their own.”

While editing the website, Rachele Kanigel, Professor and Chair of the journalism department at San Francisco State University, realized that “there were a lot of issues and context that needed further exploration, and that a book would be a better format for that information.” The result was the book version of “The Diversity Style Guide,” a highly useful and usable tool for students, professors and professional journalists alike. Although published in 2019, what better time to explore this book than now? Continue reading “Review of ‘The Diversity Style Guide,’ by Rachele Kanigel”

Bearing witness to democracy on the road presents challenges but pays an enormous dividend

By David Swartzlander
Past President, College Media Association

Attending my first inauguration was a dream come true.

Literally.

After I was hired in 1999 as a journalism instructor at Doane University in Crete, Neb., I was told I had a month to come up with an idea to teach a course for a two-week interval between fall and spring semesters. Students learned through mini-courses on campus or they traveled off-campus for academic reasons.

For days, I searched in vain for an idea. When my head hit the pillow one week before the proposal deadline, I still was clueless.

That’s when I dreamed I attended the 2001 presidential inauguration. And I realized that it happened every four years on Jan. 20, perfect timing for the class. I had my course.

Over my 22 years at Doane, I led dozens of students to five presidential inaugurations — from the “hanging chad” election of George W. Bush to the magically historical inauguration of Barack Obama to the “American Carnage” inauguration of Donald Trump. We traveled as one news organization, reporting and sharing stories with students and readers/listeners in Nebraska.

Continue reading “Five inaugurations on the front lines with student journalists”

Finding news in new places during an isolating time

By Susan Coleman Goldstein
Mount Wachusett Community College

“I don’t have any ideas for my next beat.”

This is a common lament, particularly at my school, a small, rural Massachusetts community college, where most of the students enroll in my basic news reporting course to check off an elective. They usually have no desire to enter the journalism field or to even write professionally, unless it’s creative writing.

In the old pre-pandemic days, I relied on our campus for beat ideas. I stood in the classroom and talked about the importance of covering the Student Government Association, for example— “follow the money,” I’d say passionately into faces that usually showed no reaction. But that was okay because then I could take them on a forced field trip, down three flights of stairs to the Student Life Office, where they met Kathy, the woman who gave them the agenda and minutes for the next SGA meeting, the woman who provided contacts to campus clubs, and the woman who supplied background and details about upcoming events.

What about a beat focused on the library? Tutoring services? Advising? The Student Lounge? “Line up! Let’s take a stroll around campus and get to know these people.” Along the way, we often practiced short impromptu interviews in the hallways with passing students. There would be embarrassed laughs, shaky hands taking notes, or the occasional bravado of someone comfortable with talking to strangers, but the lesson was learned: story ideas were everywhere on campus.

Continue reading “A pandemic as the unexpected teacher”

How student journalists learn to file public records requests

By Katherine Fink
Pace University
[email protected]

Abstract: This interview-based study examines the experiences of college journalists who have filed freedom of information (FOI) requests. Sixteen college journalists were asked about specific public-records requests they filed and their feelings about FOI in general. This study finds that college journalists generally learned how to file FOI requests not in the classroom, but rather from their peers. Students filed requests that tended to seek records from their home institutions rather than from other agencies. College journalists were generally optimistic about the potential of FOI to yield newsworthy information, despite that many of their requests went nowhere. College journalists also believed their status as students put them at a disadvantage. Finally, some students recognized that the outcomes of requests were highly situational, based on the records officers handling them.

Continue reading “Research (Vol. 58): Freedom of Information in College”

The image and the reports–and seeking the truth behind them

By Carolyn Schurr Levin

We’ve all seen the video or picture, or both. What we may not know, unfortunately, is the truth behind them.

In January 2019, 16 year old Nicholas Sandmann participated in a school trip to Washington D.C. along with other students from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky. Sandmann, who wore a Make America Great Again hat, participated with his classmates in a March For Life rally and then went to the Lincoln Memorial to wait for the buses that would bring them home to Kentucky. While at the Lincoln Memorial, Sandmann encountered 64-year-old Native American activist Nathan Phillips, who was standing in front of him, playing a drum and chanting at an Indigenous Peoples March.

Sandmann’s interaction with Phillips was captured in photos and videos, which went viral. In addition to being reported by mainstream media outlets CNN, the Washington Post, NBC, and others, a video of the encounter was uploaded and widely shared on social media platforms, including Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, receiving millions of views. The video led to widespread accusations of bigotry by Sandmann. Almost universally, the media coverage of the encounter portrayed Sandmann as the smirking aggressor. That is not, apparently, what really happened.

Days later, new video provided additional context and showed that the initial media reports had omitted key details of the encounter. In the new video, a group of black men who identify as members of the Hebrew Israelites was seen taunting the Covington Catholic High School students with disparaging language and shouting racist slurs at participants of the Indigenous Peoples Rally and others. Continue reading “Legal Analysis: Nicholas Sandmann v. ‘The Media’”

A Guide For Professional Conduct by SPJ

Reviewed by Carolyn Schurr Levin

There is no shortage of course materials for media ethics classes. Yet, can there ever be too many? I’d argue no – the more the better. That is also clearly the position of the Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Committee, which on June 25, 2020, released the 5^th edition of its ethics handbook and collection of cases. Both the new edition and the 4^th edition, which was released in 2011, are the effort of the Ethics Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists, and were edited by long time journalist Fred Brown, a former chairperson of the Ethics Committee and former SPJ national president. (The first three editions were primarily the work of the Poynter Institute.)

In the six years since the 4^th edition was printed, everything has changed, and nothing has changed. The SPJ Journalists Code of Ethics still imparts the profession’s collective wisdom, and remains the focus of the book – “the news industry’s widely accepted gold standard of journalism principles,” according to the book’s promotion. Like the four editions before it, this book is organized around the SPJ Code of Ethics, whose basic principles are reflected in many other codes of ethics across a wide range of communications disciplines, Brown said.

The new edition expands beyond journalism to those other communications disciplines and a growing number of technologies. “Media Ethics: A Guide for Professional Conduct” is intended to be used as a college-level textbook in ethics classes whose students are not just aspiring journalists, but strategic communicators such as P.R. professionals or workers in political campaigns,” Brown said. And, the new edition is, for the first time, available in online form as well as in print, to be both more accessible and less expensive for those students. (The paperback is $24.99 and the ebook is $19.99.) Continue reading “Book Review: Media Ethics”

How Award-Winning Student Newspaper Editorials Framed COVID-19

By Brittany L. Fleming
and Emily A. Dolan
Slippery Rock University

Abstract: The current study explored the content of initial COVID-19 editorials from award-winning student newspapers across the country in an effort to understand how these editorials framed the issue. Using both qualitative and quantitative analyses, we found that top student newspapers framed the issue largely around morality and economic issues. Other frames were also employed (e.g., conflict), albeit to a lesser extent. Our analyses also provide details on the common language editorials employed within each frame and how frames were strategically employed across editorials. Our discussion provides an in-depth analysis of the structure of initial COVID-19 editorials and a framework for editorial reporting on crises in the future is proposed. Continue reading “Research (Vol. 58): What’s in an Editorial Frame?”