I love California
Jan. 14th, 2009 05:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumSomedays I love it more than others. Every year we get a slew of new laws taking effect on Jan. 1.
This year one of them is School administrators cannot punish high school newspaper advisers who refuse to censor some student-written material.
This is not only fitting, and proper, it is right. I was lucky, the school district to which I belonged had that written into the district rules. I suppose it may have been changed in the 23 years since I graduated, but I suspect not.
There was a flap when (at my high school) the principal tried to engage in some prior restraint. They were, you see, allowed to see the press-ready galleys. They weren't allowed, however, to keep them, or change them (which would have been hard to hide; this was in the days of beeswax backing strips of paper).
A quick call to the district HQ and the galley was back in our hands.
My college was the same way, save that they had no right to see the pages. They really didn't like us (we were a gadfly to the district, which didn't like it; and we were all over things some of the administration didn't like).
For the year before I was on staff we had a college president who supported us. When the campus police chief gave us the runaround Dr. Wolf called him up and told him the public records were public and he had to let us look at them.
The semester I was managing editor they tried to bribe the one of the advisors (we had three, two who really knew print, one who specialised in photo). They told Mike he could be chairman of the dept. All he had to do was keep us in line.
They croggled when he said he couldn't do that, as the paper belonged to us. This was, in fact true. The Media Arts Dept. didn't own the paper. Rossalynn (who ran the advertising) was the only paid employee. Her paycheck came from ad revenue. Elayne, our compositor was classified staff, and her job description was, Dept. Secretary, and Roundup Compositor. The couldn't tell her to stop typing the copy; not without renegotiating her contract.
They told him he could, all he had to do was fail us if we wrote things which, "made the school look bad." He was more restrained than I would have been, he merely told them that would be unethical, which the entire conversation they were having had just become; at which point he left.
A free press is a bedrock of having an open society. It's something people are willing to be hurt, or killed, to keep.
Final Editorial
There is no way to foster that sort of thing if our high school students are taught the gov't (which is what the school administration is, relative to the HS press) is allowed to censor them.
The only question is... why did it take so long.
This year one of them is School administrators cannot punish high school newspaper advisers who refuse to censor some student-written material.
This is not only fitting, and proper, it is right. I was lucky, the school district to which I belonged had that written into the district rules. I suppose it may have been changed in the 23 years since I graduated, but I suspect not.
There was a flap when (at my high school) the principal tried to engage in some prior restraint. They were, you see, allowed to see the press-ready galleys. They weren't allowed, however, to keep them, or change them (which would have been hard to hide; this was in the days of beeswax backing strips of paper).
A quick call to the district HQ and the galley was back in our hands.
My college was the same way, save that they had no right to see the pages. They really didn't like us (we were a gadfly to the district, which didn't like it; and we were all over things some of the administration didn't like).
For the year before I was on staff we had a college president who supported us. When the campus police chief gave us the runaround Dr. Wolf called him up and told him the public records were public and he had to let us look at them.
The semester I was managing editor they tried to bribe the one of the advisors (we had three, two who really knew print, one who specialised in photo). They told Mike he could be chairman of the dept. All he had to do was keep us in line.
They croggled when he said he couldn't do that, as the paper belonged to us. This was, in fact true. The Media Arts Dept. didn't own the paper. Rossalynn (who ran the advertising) was the only paid employee. Her paycheck came from ad revenue. Elayne, our compositor was classified staff, and her job description was, Dept. Secretary, and Roundup Compositor. The couldn't tell her to stop typing the copy; not without renegotiating her contract.
They told him he could, all he had to do was fail us if we wrote things which, "made the school look bad." He was more restrained than I would have been, he merely told them that would be unethical, which the entire conversation they were having had just become; at which point he left.
A free press is a bedrock of having an open society. It's something people are willing to be hurt, or killed, to keep.
Final Editorial
There is no way to foster that sort of thing if our high school students are taught the gov't (which is what the school administration is, relative to the HS press) is allowed to censor them.
The only question is... why did it take so long.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-15 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-15 03:31 am (UTC)Because that attitude was the case as far back as the late sixties, it was cultural. I ought to go look and see what the paper looks like now. Elayne has retired, so things are a little different.
and yet now
Date: 2009-01-21 06:57 am (UTC)face it, they make the old Pravda and Izvestia look positively open.....
that's why i cheer every time i hear another paper is in bankruptcy: morally they've been there for years.
BTW: when are you two coming to visit? spring is coming, and so is outdoor dining season.