SUNSHINE WEEK: High school journalists dig through public records to get the real dirt
March 13, 2006
From bland to bam, stories that go beyond the surface
Diana Mitsu Klos,
senior project director for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, shares
tips for student journalists who want to use open records to practice better
journalism.
- Don’t sell your readers short by doing the
same-old “surface” stories. Everyone criticizes cafeteria food. Take
it a step further. Look into how cafeteria contracts are awarded. Read through
health inspection reports detailing your caf’s cleanliness. See if the
food meets FDA nutritional guidelines.
- File open records requests
seeking information about teacher and administrator salaries.
- Delve
into the finer points of how, and who, creates the school budget.
- See
if the condition of your school’s buses is up to par.
- Because
of increased government secrecy, sometimes what should be readily available info
is more difficult to access. Know what records you are entitled to before you
ask. Don’t back down and know how to file a Freedom of Information Act
request.
- Don’t sidestep research by turning a hot topic into an
opinion column. “It’s much better to do the right research and get
viewpoints rather than use the pronoun ‘I.’ The better you become,
you realize the story is not about you at
all.”
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Student journalists at Desoto High School could have
written a story on how administrators were spending money to solve the gang problem at their school.
The problem was, there was not a gang problem
at the suburban Dallas school and the school district was already hurting financially,
said Eric Gentry, a former staff member of the DeSoto student
paper, the
Eagle Eye.
“There
wasn’t a lot of money to be thrown around when there wasn’t much
money to begin with,” he said.
Intrigued by what seemed to be
wasteful government spending, Gentry, along with three other staff members, dug
deeper.
After being tipped off in November 2004 in an e-mail about
the credibility of the company doing the investigation, Project JAMS (Just
Another Means of Success), the reporters looked through public records to learn
more about the company.
Gentry went to the administration office and
asked to see the application of JAM’s director, Aman Rashidi. From there,
the students grew skeptical about Rashidi’s past employment, including a
claim he had implemented his program at Columbine High School after the school
shooting.
One by one, Rashidi’s “past employers”
denied they ever employed him. Administrators from the few schools he did
actually work at told Gentry, “Get your money back.”
Gentry said, to his knowledge, no criminal charges were
ever brought against Rashidi.
The reporter also requested copies of
the check the school wrote Rashidi for $65,000 — prepayment for the gang
study. Project JAMS was requesting $1 million in all.
For the most part,
administrators readily gave student reporters the information they sought. But
there were a few times when Gentry had to threaten legal action if he was denied
records, he said.
“I don’t think they realized we
realized what we could get,” Gentry said.
For their
investigative efforts, four Eagle Eye
reporters and their adviser Carol Richtsmeier, who Gentry said was a huge help
guiding the students, were awarded the 2005 Courage in Journalism Award, a
scholarship given by the Newseum, the Student Press Law Center and the National
Scholastic Press Association.
Gentry also received a $25,000 Free
Spirit Scholarship from the Freedom Forum in 2005 and is now a freshman at
Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas, where he is studying the Bible
and journalism.
Many high school students are not sinking their
journalistic chops into such meaty stories, and it may be because many are not
using public records for their research, said Diana Mitsu Klos, senior project
director for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
“It’s simply a matter of understanding your basic rights
and how useful [public records are] in researching and telling stories,”
Mitsu Klos said. “It’s about being able to do the type of stories
that go below the surface.”
In December 2005 a group of student
reporters in Minnesota also exemplified not taking something at face value. The
staff of Stillwater Area High
School’s student paper, the Pony
Express, was excited to write a
story about an interesting potential transfer student who said his name was
“Caspian James Chrichton-Stuart IV, the Fifth Duke of
Cleveland.”
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SPLC’s Sunshine Week stories from last year
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According to Pony
Express adviser Rachel Steil, while they will deny it now, most
students and staff believed a real 17-year-old British Duke was considering
attending their southeast Minnesota school.
But after staff members
interviewed the Duke about his royal exploits — which included being
babysat by Princess Diana and hanging out with Hilary Duff — something even
weirder happened. The Duke bestowed “royal” papers on the staff
demanding he have the chance to read the article before it printed. Oh, and he
wanted to be referred to exclusively as “His Grace” or “Your
Grace.”
The students and their adviser investigated —
making use of the National Sex Offender Registry and placing a few calls to the
British Embassy. The newspaper staff eventually discovered the Duke was not only
a fraud, but also a 22-year-old registered sex offender named Joshua Adam
Gardner.
Gardner was arrested for violating parole and is currently
being detained in a Minnesota jail. According to an article in the
Pioneer Press, a local paper,
sheriff’s office investigators are looking into the possibility Gardner
had illegal sexual contact with a Stillwater Area High School student.
Pony Express staff members
call the courthouse every day to check on the progress of the case, they said.
Students
at both these schools enriched their stories by tapping into public records. The
students in Texas had the choice of playing it safe and writing that the school
was paying a company to look into a gang problem. The students in Minnesota
could have let their excitement get a hold of them and write about their
school’s brush with royalty. But both followed inklings that something was
not quite right, and they used public records to confirm their
hunches.
Doing any less would be a disservice to the school and the
community, Mitsu Klos said. “The biggest disadvantage is you’re not
telling a full, complete, factually driven story. Students in particular and
society in general are ill-served when they get these small bites of information
when they don’t see what’s on the plate.”
—by Emily Walker, SPLC staff writer
Check the Student Press Law Center’s Web site tomorrow for more examples of how high school journalists can use public records to write stories. The SPLC is running a story each day this week highlighting open records issues specific to student journalists in celebration of Sunshine Week.
© 2006 Student Press Law Center
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