In the Midst of Crisis.... Creating an Editorial Policy for a High School Newspaper

You are in your junior year at Generic High School. You took Intro to Journalism your freshman year and have been on the staff of both the newspaper and the yearbook since the fall of your sophomore year. Even though you learned about the importance of policies to handle issues as they arise throughout the year, your school's publications do not have such policies. Last school year was a banner year at your high school. Your yearbook adviser was arrested and, during the summer, convicted of sexually abusing a student at the school. He will be spending over four years in prison. A student who would have been a member of this year's senior class passed away after a long battle with cancer. And to top it all off, two teachers and two students were caught in the chemistry lab cooking methamphetamine.Unfortunately, your newspaper adviser does not have a very strong personality. She was hired just last year and is very young. She was not involved in journalism before this last year. Because of this, she was easily intimidated by your school's administration. She allowed them to look at every issue of the newspaper before it was published. As a result, not one of the above-described stories made it to the newspaper. The administration said that they didn't want to bring more embarrassment to the school, even though the much more widely read local newspapers had covered everything in detail.As a veteran on the staff, you have decided to champion a new set of policies for your school's newspaper. However, before you do, you have to find out what your rights are with regard to publishing the issues such as those that came up last school year.