To Print or Not To Print

Debbie is a high school senior and the editor of her school newspaper, The Gazette. Debbie takes her position at The Gazette very seriously. Her goal as Editor is to balance the paper’s content for the broad audience of students, faculty, alumni, and parents, which can prove challenging. Recently, during an open meeting for admitted students, a student accused the administration of ignoring rapes on campus, and these allegations began to circulate across the country. Debbie had to decide whether The Gazette would print a story covering the incident. While these allegations were an important story, she knew that as soon as anything about the incident appeared in the school newspaper, it would spread farther and could potentially be damaging to the school.

Debbie is a seventeen-year-old high school senior and editor of her high school newspaper, The Gazette. She became interested in journalism at an early age (her grandfather was a journalist), but, as she says, “when you’re four years old, you can’t be a journalist.” She had her first opportunity to actually write articles as a high school sophomore. At first, her assignments were “boring,” but she soon began getting more interesting stories. From the spring of her sophomore year until the spring of her junior year, she served as layout editor. Then, she and two other juniors became editors-in-chief. 

Debbie takes her position at the newspaper very seriously. For her, it is more than an extracurricular activity. She sees her work on the paper as one way to serve the community and she views her position on the newspaper as her primary responsibility. Being on staff at The Gazette is a serious time commitment and Debbie often talks about the difficulty of balancing her workload on the newspaper, especially with her schoolwork. 

Debbie’s goal as editor of The Gazette is to balance the paper’s content for a broad audience of students, faculty, administration, alumni, and parents. This proves challenging. For example, Debbie explains that alumni and parents will want to read an article about a speaker on campus, but that students who attended the speech already know about the event. Students will be interested to know about planning for a new arts center, but trustees have already learned the details. Her broader goal as a journalist is to effect positive change through the newspaper, especially through editorials. There is an editorial board that votes on the subject of each editorial to make sure that the staff’s view is expressed. This way, faculty, parents, and alumni hear the student body’s opinion, not just an individual’s view. 

Debbie believes in the power of newspapers—especially their potential to sway a reader’s view on a particular topic. Because of this, she doesn’t like to give much press to issues she views as negative. Everything “newsworthy” is considered, but she does not like to print stories that would cause “discomfort” to members of the school—for example, a student’s dismissal from school. Her goal is to share news to educate, not to sell papers. Debbie likes to think that other journalists are not just out to get the best story, but that they are as motivated as she is by the value of service to others. 

Debbie also worries about the coverage of negative news because she perceives a conflict between her responsibility to alert readers to information and the potential damage inflicted on the subject of the negative story. She feels that “it’s hard to know if it’s right to inform the public or to potentially ruin someone or something by writing something bad.“ She says that courage is important in these instances because “it’s difficult to say bad things … that are opposite of the general sentiment.“ Debbie is also concerned about excessive press coverage when reporters badger their subjects and do not respect privacy. She feels her concerns are shared by the public, but is not sure whether the journalistic community feels the same way. She would like to see a trend toward respecting individual privacy, but acknowledges that this can be hard when a reporter is exposing someone and needs to publish the truth. 

Recently, during the whole-school “roll call” for prospective students (an open meeting when admitted students come get a feel for whether they want to attend this particular school), a student accused the administration of ignoring rapes on campus. These allegations began to circulate across the country: the story appeared on national television and in national newspapers. Debbie knew that as soon as anything about the incident appeared in the school newspaper, it would spread farther and could potentially be damaging to the school. 

These allegations were an important story, and as editor of The Gazette, Debbie felt that she should cover it. She explains that the incident “tore the school apart, and the whole senior class was divided over it. “Even though it was just an awful, awful thing,” Debbie was torn, “It was the biggest thing that had happened in my time here— how could we not cover it?” Yet at the same time, she didn’t want to generate more publicity for unproven accusations. 

Her decision did not come easily, especially since this was her first newspaper issue as an editor. In the end, Debbie and her co-editors decided to deal with the issue by printing a short story with just the facts, and no editorializing. She explains: 

“We printed a kind of a short thing that just gave the facts. We avoided it a little bit more than I would have liked. I would have liked to see us take more of a stance on it, but I guess there was so much pressure from the administration to not talk about it too much or give it too much publicity, that we gave into that more than I would have liked to. It was a compromise.”

Interestingly, because the article appeared in The Gazette, the admissions office did not order their standard thousand copies of the paper, on which the editors normally depend for the newspaper’s budgetary needs. Debbie explains that the school did not want to publicize the story for prospective students, board members, and alumni (on whom the administration depends for financial support), since it might have damaging effects for the school. Debbie says, “They felt that wasn’t an appropriate story to run.” As an editor of The Gazette, this was the only time that Debbie experienced any kind of “censorship.” She suggests that, as a journalist, “It’s really stressful just wondering what people are going to think. Being such a small community … you can’t step on anyone’s toes, so to speak … There’s so many conflicting interests.”

What factors would you take into consideration if you were Debbie and had to decide whether or not to run this story? How might Debbie feel her values are in conflict as both a journalist and community member? If you were a student at Debbie’s school, how would you advise Debbie?