Attack Brings New Challenges for High School Press

By Charles McKenzie

As we feel our way through these horrific times, media members must embrace a reaffirmed journalistic significance. Both the stories we tell our readers and the images we show them take on gravity unmatched during our lifetimes. 

We have never seen anything like the September 11 terrorist attacks on our country. More than ever, readers will turn to the media to make sense of what they are seeing, hearing, feeling, and sensing. 

This is as true for high school journalists as it is for the national and international media. But what shall we tell our audience when this tragedy is as incomprehensible to us as it is to them?

We cannot help re-watching the surreal parade of terrorist attacks, but it's equally important during follow-up coverage to look within ourselves. Putting aside our duties as journalists, what are we as people -- as Americans -- feeling? What are our fears? At whom do we point fingers? How do we mourn and remember the lost?

It is only after we make sense of our own feelings that we can sit down and take a more objective look at the direction of our coverage.

A large portion of this planning process has to be identifying the fears and feelings and questions of the audience. This step can be made only through talking with your fellow students -- not just your friends, classmates, and teammates, but also the strangers who roam the halls with you every day.

Look for new ways to tell the story. Bring the story home to your high school. Maybe some students from your school went to the World Trade Center or the Pentagon over the summer. Perhaps a classmate has a family member or friend working in one of the buildings.

Someone's mom or dad is an airline pilot. Somewhere a student of Middle Eastern background is being made fun of -- or worse -- because of fear and ignorance. Numerous students have already committed to the armed forces after high school graduation, and perhaps others will join as a result of the attack. How did students first learn of the tragedies? Perhaps these -- and scores more -- are the stories worth telling.

Scholastic journalists must also draw a thick, definitive line between editorials and coverage. Coverage must reflect public opinion but not lead it. Stories should help set the public agenda; that is, journalists should tell people not what to think, but what to think about.

Also, be weary of war-mongering, finger-pointing, and fist-shaking journalism. It is not your role to call out for revenge or even compassion. Simply tell the stories as they exist, and let any lessons grow naturally out of that coverage. Don't preach to your readers.

Obviously, editorials are a whole different animal. You can do much of the above in the opinion pages, but make sure you are delivering new arguments. Make sure that you aren't giving readers the "Duh! opinion." For example, "Terrorism is wrong." "I'm against killing innocent people." "These terrorists should be punished." "The airlines should be more careful." "Safety should be a priority." Comments like these don't further the discussion. Who wouldn't agree with your arguments? If you must point out the obvious, do it in a new way.

The world journalists report on will never be the same. That brings with it new problems and new challenges. John F. Kennedy taught us that when written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is actually written as a combination of two words: "danger" and "opportunity."


-- Charles McKenzie is a journalist who teaches mass communications classes at the University of South Florida. He has served as a speaker and judge at several Florida Scholastic Press Association conferences. He also helped lead an American Society of Newspaper Editors conference for high school journalism teachers at USF this summer.