Yesterday, I sat down on the grass with a friend. We talked about the move I will be making to Chicago in the fall to study creative writing and journalism. When he asked me why journalism, all I could think to say was that there is a world. In that world, there is history to be made, stories to tell. There is ground to break.
If I hadn’t joined newspaper staff in the beginning of high school, I don’t think I would have this great love for language or listening, or spending 700 words with someone who I have never met. Emily Dickinson said that good poetry should physically make you feel as if the top of your head has come off. I think good journalism should do this too. I love to have my head cut off.
As a Communicator staff member, I think that it’s our job to decapitate. I may be biased, but I see courage in Communicator pieces. I like that we don’t have a safety net, but I know that’s because we are an open forum for student expression, existing under the Tinker Policy. Tinker states that no student shall shed their first amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate. I believe that if our paper existed under prior review, we couldn’t do our job.
Another high school publication that does not practice prior review is The Squall, of neighboring Dexter High School. The Squall is an award winning paper, with an adviser that does a bang-up job. Unfortunately for DHS, their practices are being threatened.
The recently released blog “Clean Up DHS” is fighting against Dexter’s existence as an open forum for student expression. As a long time staff member of a paper with the same beliefs, I know that if we lost our first amendment rights, we would be losing our paper, and our website. An article about MIPs probably wouldn’t have been published earlier this semester. An article about Self-Injury likely wouldn’t have been printed last year. We would lose all of the pieces that give The Communicator its heart; the pieces that make us who we are.
For this to happen to Dexter would be just as heartbreaking. As I journalist, I love knowing that I have rights to use my words freely. I would be shocked to find a staff member of a quality, award winning paper who isn’t dedicated to their publication, or who is lacking passion. Dexter is in no way deserving of prior review.
In such an existence, great limits would appear. Journalism wouldn’t take a reporter anywhere. The world would get smaller. Less ground would be broken.
