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Accuracy:
The Student Journalist's Top Priority
By
Doug White
Online Reporter
I
vividly remember the day I decided I was going to be a journalist.
It was
my first day at Oakcrest High School in Mays Landing, N.J.
I got off to a rocky start as I aimlessly meandered through
a maze of corridors in hopes of locating my assigned homeroom.
Asking other freshman for directions was no help, and the
upperclassmen kept trying to sell me school "pool passes"
for a pool that, I later found out, did not exist.
When
I finally made it to the elusive classroom I took a seat and
put my head down to wallow in a sea of nagging thoughts that
all pointed to one irrefutable fact:
This
is going to be a long four years.
But
then something piqued my interest. The teacher unexpectedly
turned on a TV inconspicuously perched in the left-hand corner
of the room.
You
get to watch TV in high school? Maybe this isn't so bad after
all, I thought.
But
the station he flipped to wasn't HBO or MTV.
It was "Falcon TV," an in-school, closed-circuit broadcast
run by students who produced daily news reports and read them
on air.
At the
time, I was journalistically clueless and would have guessed
the "inverted pyramid" was a new Egyptian restaurant in town.
But
I was amazed, intrigued, and immediately sure of one thing:
Someday
I am going to be a reporter.
Eleven
years later I am a reporter, and I'm producing Poynter's
High School Journalism Guide to help today's scholastic
journalists improve their skills.
This
guide offers information and tips from some of the top working
professionals and media experts in the industry.
Whether
it's advice on enhancing your photography, column writing,
or news design, threaded through each section is an overarching
message: GET IT RIGHT.
Journalist
after journalist said every media student should scrawl this
tenet at the very top of their "to do" list.
As reporter
Victoria Lim of WFLA-TV says: "Accuracy is the foundation
in any form of journalism, no matter what the medium. If you
don't have the facts right, it's not news and it's not journalism.
Understanding the facts and being accurate is what you build
your good name and reputation on."
As Pulitzer
Prize-winning writer Tom French tells students, "be tough
and scrupulous on yourself."
And
of course, check the building before you buy a pool pass.
-- Online Reporter Doug White is currently completing his
master's degree in journalism at the University of South Florida.
This fall, he'll lead a photojournalism mentorship program
for Tampa-area youth. White hasn't had detention in 10 years.
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