IHSPA Insider

By Mike Klopfenstein

Southport High School The Journal Adviser

My newspaper students expected kids at our school to hold a walkout to protest ICE. They just didn’t expect it as soon as it happened.

The protest they were anticipating was supposedly scheduled for a few weeks down the road. A few of my kids even threw me out of my classroom after school one day to interview the organizer of the planned walkout, whom they intended to quote anonymously in a story they were working on about student sentiments regarding ICE.

So, when I got a call on a Sunday night from my Editor-in-Chief, who said she heard kids were going to walk out the next day, my advice was to just be ready. Make sure that camera batteries were charged and that a plan was in place.

The walkout happened just after our newspaper period. In class, I told the kids that our two seniors, who were unassigned the next period, should probably be the ones to go with the protesters if they walked off of school grounds. I would not, I assured them, try to protect any of our staffers from punishment if they skipped class and left school grounds with the protesters even if their purpose was protest coverage.

Of course, one of my kids skipped class and walked off school grounds with the protesters.

It was incredibly important to our Culture Editor, Zeid Alsalloum, that he be the one to tell the story of the walkout. So, he walked toward downtown Indianapolis with the protesters for 40 minutes until he reached a gas station about two miles from our school. Along the way, he took notes, snapped pictures and conducted interviews. Several of the protesters walked well past that gas station and eventually reached Monument Circle downtown more than five hours after they left school.

After school, my students and I had some quick decisions to make. Should Zeid write a straight news piece or something different? Should he name the protesters he quoted? Should we show the faces of protesters in the photos we use? How should we work in our administration’s point of view?

Much discussion went into our answers to those questions. I’m not sure all of our answers were right, but they allowed us to follow our policies while still allowing the kids to produce the coverage they wanted.

Straight news piece? As Zeid began work on his story, it became clear that he was writing neither an inverted-pyramid news story nor a typical feature story. His choice to walk with the protesters and take his punishment later wasn’t the choice I wanted him to make, but it did allow him to write a detailed story that read like a narrative. That format wouldn’t have been my suggestion before he started writing, but it turned out to be the right decision given the experience he’d had and the information he gathered.

Identify the protesters? I knew Zeid and my Editor-in-Chief Lucy Len Dim really wanted the answer to be “yes.” Their argument: These kids wanted to be seen and heard. Ultimately, I talked them out of it (with some support from yearbook adviser Sam Hanley, who wanted to sit in on our meeting). My argument was this: Though we all supported the sentiment behind the walkout, the actions of the protesters broke school rules and, since they blocked traffic in the early stage of the walkout, technically broke the law. Our policy has always been that if we quoted students about their breaking of school rules or the law, we kept those sources anonymous. I thought it was important that we adhere to that policy even in this case when the protesters were very public with their actions.

How to get administrative opinion in? My students knew that we had to be fair and present our administration’s response to the protest. Our principal is always fantastic with my students, and in this case, she gave Zeid a 20-minute interview the day after the walkout. The problem was that Zeid realized it was going to be difficult to make the principal’s “day after” quotes flow in his narrative story without jamming them in at the very end, and that wouldn’t be fair to her. So, Zeid wrote a completely separate story based on his interview with our principal. Doing so allowed our readers to have a clear understanding of our administration’s response. More than two weeks after the walkout, the protest story and the principal story are still trending #1 and #2 on our website.

It’s safe to say that advisers all over the state will be helping their kids cover protests in the coming months, and it’s important that, as we provide that help, discussions about coverage strategy, publication policy, objectivity and fairness happen with our students. We thought we had time to make those decisions and then ended up scrambling when we realized we didn’t. I’d suggest having a plan in place so your staff doesn’t get caught off guard the next time students walk out.

If you have an idea for a blog on a journalistic topic, lesson, or experience you'd like to write about, would love to have you as a guest author one month. Submit your blog proposal here, and we will be in touch.

Joe Gisondi's "Field Guide to Covering Sports" is a great addition to a classroom journalism library. It discusses a wide range of sports writing topics like writing game stories, sports features, and sports columns with advice from professional journalists. Students can learn how to use and track statistics for games.

Perhaps the most beneficial part of the book is the "Covering a Beat" section. This section features detailed breakdowns of over 20 individual sports, including information about the basics of the sports, important vocabulary, what to watch for during a game, how to keep score, and how to cover a given sport. This section is a great resource for any student who are afraid to cover a sport because they don't know the game.

Check out Quill and Scroll, an international honor society for high school journalism students since 1926. This organization has a long history of supporting and recognizing excellent student journalists. Students who earn membership become lifelong members. Quill and Scroll offers both student and adviser scholarships along with contests and critiques. Furthermore, they offer resources for advisers of chapter members.

We want to highlight and share great journalism resources in our monthly newsletters. Use this form to suggest lessons, curriculum, classroom ideas, places to find resources, etc. in a future newsletter. Basically, please share anything you think would help your fellow advisors.

Advisers: Mike Klopfenstein and Sam Hanley

• "A school on edge": Southport High School sentiments about ICE based on a recent poll (for which over 20% of our students responded)
• "Beyond school doors": Coverage over Southport High School's student walkout about ICE
• "A walkout without warning": A story about our principal's reaction to the ICE walkout
• "Beneath the mat": A good wrestling feature from first semester
• "We don’t sing until we win": Game wrap for our football team's first win in two years.
• "Over the horizon": A Feature about student pilot with companion video
• "Once a Card, always a Card" & "Buenoism": Two obituaries/tribute pieces: about the former Southport High School office manager and a former cross country star/coach from Southport High School
• "Seussical the Musical": Photos from the school musical

• "All the way up": Spread about a student pilot and students best travel experiences
• "Finding voice beyond the fear": Spread about students and staff discussing their greatest fears
• "How did you choose to leave your mark and be remembered?": Spread about how students hope to be remembered after high school
• "Marching through the ranks": Spread about the marching band
• "Mass appeal": Spread about Junior Booster Club
• "New circumstances": Spread about boys soccer

Social Media

• Marketing video for student publications
• "Day in the life" from Nashville

• Friday Night Lights recap video
• Marketing video from the Holiday Season

Submit the best of your student's work here. Every month we'd like to highlight great journalism from IHSPA journalists. We'd like to high light a variety of journalism, including print, yearbook, broadcast, writing, photojournalism, podcasts, etc. So, keep submitting your student's work throughout the year!