Building stronger reporting practices

As teachers prepare for Scholastic Journalism Week and look for special lessons, articles from the Committee of Concerned Journalists could lead to lessons or teaching activities. Any or all of the concepts mentioned in the articles could lead to stronger reporting and practices.

As too many advisers and journalism programs have learned, it is not enough to show administrators that students have a right to free and responsible expression. Sometimes it requires demonstrating how journalism creates professional practices, meets educational standards and how these principles fit into the overall mission of schools.

Perhaps one or more of these articles might accomplish those goals for you:

• Don’t know much about history – and why that matters
http://www.concernedjournalists.org/don-t-know-much-about-history

• What the campaign is teaching me: The opposite of hate is journalism
http://www.concernedjournalists.org/what-campaign-teaching-me-opposite-hate-journalism

• Yikes! The sky is falling and we’re all going to die!
http://www.concernedjournalists.org/sky-falling-and-were-all-going-die

• The quaintness of fact-checking in the blogosphere
http://www.concernedjournalists.org/i-assume-therefore-i-blog-quaintness-fact-checking-blogosphere

• Do you know your stuff?
http://www.concernedjournalists.org/take-crash-course-real-world-101

• What’s not being said
http://www.concernedjournalists.org/when-basics-arent-good-enough

• Passion for journalism
http://www.concernedjournalists.org/passion-journalism

• Learning from our mistakes
http://www.concernedjournalists.org/learning-our-mistakes