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It's back!
In 2005, RTNDF’s High School Project put together a teacher’s toolbox called “Broadcast in a Box.” It consisted of three books, three discs and the RTNDA Code of Ethics.
Response to the printed Broadcast in a Box was overwhelming, and we ran out of copies. Now we have most of Broadcast in a Box on the web. The best practices, updated Plugged-In, First Amendment lessons, Generation Next and student videos are here. Not here are the ethics video case studies, which were not available for online distribution.
Thanks to our partners including the Illinois Press Association Foundation and Copley First Amendment Center, The Washington Post’s Young Journalists Development Program, Al Tomkins of the Poynter Institute and the many teachers, classes and journalists who provided material. |
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Foreward
RTNDF is pleased to offer “Great Ideas for Your Classroom: Getting Started in High School Electronic Journalism.” This book, and the accompanying videos, are part of a package of materials titled “Broadcast in a Box.” The package is intended as a toolkit for educators who work with students or who hope to get started working with them in the important area of electronic high school journalism.
We know that many young people want to study journalism, and we also know, thanks to research by Jack Dvorak and his colleagues at the High School Journalism Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., just what are the impediments to their doing so: school budget constraints and teachers who perceive themselves to be ill-equipped to teach journalism in general and, in particular, electronic journalism.
What’s more, a new survey, commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and released in January 2005, reports that schools are failing to give high school students an appreciation of the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and a free press. This survey suggests that student understanding of our First Amendment rights would be far greater if schools included First Amendment study as part of the regular curriculum and if support for student participation in student media were stronger.
So what’s a professional journalism organization to do? For RTNDF and its parent organization RTNDA, the answer is simple: We are working with high schools across the country to support the practice of electronic journalism. Thanks to a generous, multiyear grant from Knight Foundation, RTNDF’s High School Electronic Journalism Project has developed a multifaceted approach to supporting and sustaining interest in broadcast journalism among young people. Many professional newsrooms have joined the project and are working with schools in their areas and, we hope, many more will do so in the years to come.
Support from the professional media is critical to the success of fledgling high school electronic journalism programs, and RTNDF and RTNDA are committed to this important work. With this booklet, “Great Ideas for Your Classroom,” and the videos that accompany it, we hope to give journalism advisers a taste of what is possible at the high school level; we also hope to show how the study of journalism ethics is the essential underpinning of all good journalism. If you are a high school teacher reading this, we wish you every success in this important endeavor. Please use all the materials in “Broadcast in a Box” and share them with your educator colleagues. We urge you to call on RTNDF for advice and support; we want to help and have many ways of doing so.
--Barbara Cochran
RTNDF President
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