In their model code of ethics for High School Journalists, the National Scholastic Press Association states “Reputable conduct by student journalists helps secure the public trust and news media credibility”.  As I’ve learned as a journalist, the NSPA is accurate in saying how ethics and one’s conduct influences journalism as it holds journalists accountable toward a trustworthy audience.  As journalists, we have the tremendous responsibility of always providing our audience with accurate, informative, and engaging content. Regardless of how controversial or attention-grabbing an article attempts to be, journalists must be ethical in their practices if they want to garner respect from viewers. As such, newsroom leaders have the added responsibility of ensuring those working under them are maintaining these ideals.

 

Our editorial policy at Pantherbook centers around our drive to always be working towards having trustworthy and accurate writers who understand their responsibility in our school. As an editor, I have taken on this leadership challenge of maintaining and teaching ethical news literacy by establishing new, in-house editing practices. Understanding the responsibility editors have to provide their writers with constructive feedback while assigning them the best leads for their interests and skill levels, I proposed a new editing process for this school year. Knowing how important editors are to my work as a writer, my idea for Pantherbook editors was to use computer screen recording software to create an informative video for staff writers in which they articulate the changes they made from the writer's draft to the final published piece. This process has become common practice for our publication this year, and was introduced through a screen recorded video I did on a piece I wrote during freshman year.

 

Even with this initiative helping Pantherbook staff writers, I knew more could be done. I got in contact with a digital media teacher of mine, and took this practice even further. I proposed that, as her class practiced article-based news writing, Pantherbook posts some of their stories on our site while our editors conduct the same recorded editing videos we had conducted for our staff members. Samples of these videos are shown above. This idea was a massive success. Pantherbook was able to increase our outreach while recruiting new members who got a feel for our collaborative editing process. Additionally, I learned valuable skills in how to articulate my edits in real time and lead writers in aiding the overall way they write, not just a few fixes they make for an article and then move on.