If your newspaper is facing censorship--

Mike Hiestand, from the Student Press Law Center, discusses the Hazelwood ruling.

Let the students lead: this is ESSENTIAL! Having the admistration breathing down your back can be such a freaky situation, so you and your staff need to be prepared. You have to be ready to step back and tell your students you can help, but it's not your choice. It's their choice.

There's a lot of things that have to happen before you can let your students go ahead and make those choices. Having a strong Journalism 1 class can really help where you can spend a good, solid chunk of time living and breathing press law and freedoms. Simulations, like the one we did for ethics, really helps students talk things through and you can see the strengths and weaknesses of your future staffers. You need a strong editor-in-chief or managing editor. You must make sure that the editors really understand the laws governing your school, but you also have to train them to come to you when there's a problem. My biggest issue this past semester came up because I wasn't aware of the situation until it had gotten kinda sticky. If we could have all talked sooner, I could have given the students advice before I suddenly had the principal coming to me when I was unaware.. Also-- you need to run the line of defense knowing that your kids aren't going to offend people in interviews by asking bad questions (big problem we had: when looking for sources on sexting, a student's first question to certain girls was "When did you first sext?" with the whooping follow-up of "Come on, everyone knows you sext." that was a bit of a nightmare, but a teachable moment for the staff). You need to train your kids in order to keep parents from calling the principal to complain about bad practices from your journalists.

I like to step back and let the kids choose. I give them all the possibilities and get as much advice as possible, but they get the final say. At the end, I've been so proud of my top editors in the decisions that they've made, even if it's been a bumpy ride.

Sarah-Anne Lanman
Munster High School
Munster, Ind.