Law, Ethics and News Literacy
Photo courtesy of Sarah Wang
One of the key features of our initial journalism “bootcamp” for new staff members is learning about First Amendment rights. But the first time I really felt connected to this was when I was at JCamp this summer and I heard firsthand from my peers about their New Voices initiatives. So many of them were involved at the state level with their organizations, and one of them had even been really involved with getting his legislation passed. I saw the real benefits of supporting New Voices directly and felt inspired to bring more resources for student press rights back to The Emery at home.
POLICIES
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AI policy
After understanding that there was a growing rate of AI usage for school work (unfortunately including newspaper), I finally worked with a team to write an official AI policy that we also are using at the middle school level.
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We first thought about what specific issues we were seeing and then moved into trying to highlight what areas we wanted to limit AI usage in our own publication. We also looked at many such policies from other newspapers around the country to take inspiration and see what worked.
The Huron Emery AI Policy:
All work on The Emery is original and utilizes creativity, prohibiting the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create any article, photo, and any other element affiliated with the final product of the publication. AI may be employed to refine grammar and spelling. If, after individual thought as well as collaboration, a writer is unable to come up with topics or headlines, they may talk to an editor or mentor about the possibility of using AI for brainstorming, although it is highly discouraged by The Emery.
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When purposefully involving AI in a story, it must be clearly stated and thoroughly cited.
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Before posting or publishing any elements (articles, photos, etc.) on The Emery, the adviser and editors will review all writers’ works to reinforce and regulate AI usage.
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Use of AI will result in a meeting with the adviser and consequences will be decided upon on a case-by-case basis.
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Questions about this policy can be sent to badalamentes@aaps.k12.mi.us.
We made final edits to the policy on our computers.
Retroactive takedown policy
In the last year or so, we have seen a striking increase in the number of requests we get to take old articles or profiles off of our website. We initially dealt with these on a case-by-case basis, but after realizing that this was a pattern, I sat down with my adviser and one of our web EICs, Emily Hu, to create an official takedown policy that we can point to in such situations.
The Huron Emery Takedown Policy:
The Emery strives for accuracy in reporting as a public record while also prioritizing well-being of sources. Takedown requests due to safety concerns will be evaluated based on evidence and circumstances. Final decisions will be completed on a case-by-case basis by the editorial board and adviser. Takedown requests should be sent to thehuronemery@gmail.com.
Us working on the policy on a Zoom call.
PROJECTS
Quill & Scroll Student Advisory Board
After receiving the Student Journalist Impact Award in the spring, Lori Keekley, Quill & Scroll Director, asked me if I would like to join Q&S's Student Advisory Board this year. Since the fall, I've been attending monthly meetings and working on a project with a team of four people focused on Scholastic Journalism Week.
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We have created a series of Instagram posts (that will also go up on their website) for Scholastic Journalism Week as well as a few days leading up to it. This posts all address various details, like what Scholastic Journalism Week is, how to celebrate, what student press freedom looks like, etc. We divided the tasks up, and I created two posts for this that will be published during the week on Q&S's Instagram.
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We all used the guidelines that Marta Hill, who runs the Instagram, gave us to keep our stylistic choices consistent with the Instagram.
This is my breakout group focused on Scholastic Journalism Week. The whole group of around 20 meets monthly via Zoom.
In addition to the year-long projects that we each contribute to, we also make individual slideshows for five minute "bellringers" that student publications can do at the beginning of the class – each teaching a different skill.
This presentation features an introduction to self-censorship as well as a short activity to assess your own publication.
My second one is about creating charts in Flourish, which can be helpful for conveying stories more effectively in alternate forms.
New Voices Michigan
At JCamp, I got to hear from and interact directly with Mike Hiestand from the Student Press Law Center. During the presentation, he talked a lot about New Voices, which got me really excited about the cause. My friend Ashley Han said that she had been working on getting a New Voices Michigan up and running, and I told her I would love to join.
This is the JCamp cohort posing for a photo with Mr. Hiestand after he addressed the group.
Ashley and I began brainstorming ways that we could start by raising awareness, and one of the main things that came up was reaching out to other high school publications around Michigan. We thought that presenting at MIPA's fall conference would be a great way to do this, so we signed up and gave the below presentation.
Since then, we have been working on outreach and finding next steps in order to begin approaching the legislative side. This has involved much research and meetings with people who have prior experience with New Voices. As Ashley and I are both seniors, we are also looking into getting a larger group with underclassmen who can keep this momentum going once we graduate.
Model UN: International Press Corps
One of my main extracurriculars is Model UN, which definitely has taught me a lot about policy and debate, which are both really important to the field of journalism. This year, specifically, I attended the Model United Nations at University of Michigan conference (MUNUM), where my committee was the International Press Corps (IPC), modeled after the United Nations Correspondents Association which reports on the UN.
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I got to go around the conference and learn about the different topics being addressed within each committee. It gave me a new look into the role of journalism in diplomacy and international relations.
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I created social media posts and articles that were posted throughout the weekend. The style was definitely different from what I was used to, but it was a nice way to gain a new experience.
The website to view all the articles is here. I published a combined total of 14 articles and posts over the three days we were working.
Each article published was meant to highlight what was going on in each committee on a day-to-day basis.
MANAGEMENT
Editorial Writing
Part of my role as a print editor-in-chief has been to write staff editorials for each issue of the newspaper. Our process is usually that our team will pick a topic, one of the EICs will draft it, and then the others pitch in to edit and tweak it to fit the view of the whole staff. This style of writing took me a little bit to develop as I was mostly used to either writing hard news stories or deeply personal narratives or opinion articles. But over my three years as a print editor-in-chief, I've learned the fundamentals for editorial writing and I really see the importance of taking stances as a newsroom on topics that are affecting the daily lives of our audience. These are three examples of editorials that I did the majority of the writing for.
This editorial came out of an increase in takedown requests that we have been seeing as a staff.
I wrote this for an issue that featured a spread discussing national politics and the effects of the Trump administration.
This was a longer editorial I wrote during the thick of the budget crisis. It was an interesting experience for me – as a student journalist, I had been mostly leaning into the reporter side, but this editorial allowed me to go back to the perspective of a student.
Press conferences
We do press conferences at the beginning of the year in each newspaper class, usually with administrators and sometimes teachers. ​
I help arrange and run these press conferences. Our adviser is the moderator, but I'll usually start the press conference, record and also be ready to jump in with questions whenever there is a lull.
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This is for a couple of reasons: one is that it is a great way to ease the class into doing interviews, and another is that it helps us start the year strong with covering changes or policies with administrator perspectives. It has consistently been a great way for us to write strong news stories from the get go.
After arranging this press conference with Ms. Federhofer, our sophomore and junior principal, I sent her a Google Calendar invite to make sure everyone was prepared.
News trivia
We started every morning at JCamp with news quizzes. These were designed to ensure that we were keeping up with what was happening, sharpen our abilities to digest information and also provide us with inspiration and ideas for our own reporting and writing styles.
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I really loved the concept of this, so I brought this back with me to The Emery. News trivia is now in our weekly rotation, and our co-teacher Linda Corlew usually compiles weekly questions for us to answer in groups.
We run through the slides and discuss in small groups then review the answers as a whole.
Balancing news and opinion
As student journalists, sometimes, there is a little bit of tension between being the two concepts of being students and being journalists. As editor-in-chief, I am constantly assessing our coverage to make sure that we keep the two separate when necessary.
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For example, when the district was going through the budget cuts in 2024, we had a unique role because we were covering the situation as reporters informing the community, but as students with a voice, we also wanted to share our own perspectives and thoughts.
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The way that we settled this was through making a clear divide between our news reporting and our opinion writing. As the main person doing news coverage, I made sure to not write opinion pieces as I wanted to keep my work as unbiased as possible. However, when other staff members wanted to write about their own perspectives, I encouraged that as well as it was another important side to the story.
In our 2024 School Board section of the website, I made clear distinctions between our news and opinion writing.
Working with administration
We are extremely lucky to have a good relationship with our school's administration. We are not prior reviewed, and I value living up to the trust that administration places in us by making sure that what we publish is thorough and accurate.
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This also means making sure that we are fairly representing administration. We are often reaching out for interviews with them and so their perspective is also represented, as it can be easy to just focus on teachers and the student body, people we interact with on the daily.
Our very first print issue this year featured a spread about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Huron, especially in a time where nationally DEI protections were going away. We wanted to showcase what Huron's policies regarding this were, so we had a few writers conduct an interview with our lead principal Mr. Carter, which was a pretty big deal as he does not do many interviews with us.
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After they wrote the story, I also went down to his office to have a conversation with him about the spread and our goals with it. Because the spread was mostly focused on administration and their policies, I wanted to fact check with him and make sure we were being fair in our assessments.
Click the image to view the spread online.
Towards the end of last year, as well, there were a lot of technical administration things that our staff was interested in covering. Rather than sending a bunch of different emails and conducting lots of different interviews, we thought doing a press conference with Mr. Carter would be helpful.
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We ended up running it where we had our staff write questions and submit them to me and Maya, my then-co-editor-in-chief, and then we went through and vetted those questions and picked out the key ones we wanted to ask. We sent them to Mr. Carter in advance so he could be prepared, and then when it came time for the actual interview, Maya and I went back and forth and asked him the questions.
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Mr. Carter does not go on the record often, so it was huge that he said yes to this. We have established a good relationship with administration over the years, so again, this point of trust is really important to us.
External collaboration
The spread I designed for the yearbook last year took a look into national politics, and it talked greatly about the election. I had a picture of Kamala Harris that I had taken at the rally, but I didn't have a photo of Donald Trump for the spread, which was certainly necessary for a national politics spread. A graduate of The Emery happened to have taken some photos of Donald Trump for Ohio State University's The Lantern, and after I reached out, she was willing to let me use them.
Later that year, our issue 5 spread for The Emery was focused on the impact of the national administration from a student perspective, and I reached out again, and we were able to use another one of her photos.
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This allowed our coverage to be multi-dimensional which was really important for political coverage.
The yearbook page using mine and Sandra's photos.
We used another one of Sandra's photos in the spring for the newspaper.
My initial text exchange with Sandra. Right before this, she had visited our classroom, so we first talked in person, and I sent these messages to follow up and confirm.
Covering school board presentation
Another go-to presentation of mine is one about school board coverage. My adviser and I created this with one of our web EICs, Isha Savi, after the budget cuts, as a lot of what we learned was through the experience, and we felt it would have been helpful to have some tips going in. We thought this would be a nice way of passing it forward.
This was the version we presented this fall in Nashville.
Press releases
This year in particular, we have begun to be added to lists for receiving press releases about local topics. Whenever I receive one of these, I will assign it out to a staff member or pass it on to our news editor to take care of.
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This is really big to me because it truly shows that local reporting can have an impact. I was so surprised to open my email and see a press release from the mayor of Ann Arbor, but it means that people are actually looking at our coverage, which is huge.
The Ann Arbor Education Association (Teachers union) team sent this press release to me for coverage.
This was one of a few press releases Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor has sent to the official email of The Huron Emery.