texas high school journalism academy

12/29/10 3:25 PMCoppell High journalism students face a future they will be writing | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Arlington News

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COURTNEYPERRY/DMNCoppell High freshmanMaddie Iniestra tried herhand at editing videoduring an Intro to MassMedia Class. At a timewhen uncertaintysurrounds mediaenterprises, the schoolboldly offers a four-yearjournalism program.

COURTNEYPERRY/DMNBrandi LeBlanc ledjournalism students in adiscussion about ethics inher marketing/advertisingclass at Coppell HighSchool earlier this month.

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Coppell High journalism students face afuture they will be writing12:00 AM CST on Sunday, December 26, 2010

By AVI SELK / The Dallas Morning News [email protected]

COPPELL The sight might warm the heart of a dormant printing press, soothe a downsized reporter'stroubled dreams.

As news outlets across the country shrink or shutter, 62 freshmen at CoppellHigh School are discussing media ethics in English class, editing news clipsafter lunch and traveling the halls with school-issued "press passes."

The affluent city's high school expanded its journalism program into a four-yearacademy this year, which may seem bold as daily newspaper circulations slip to1950s-era lows.

But Irma Kennedy , the academy's director andvideo-journalism teacher, wasn't surprised when thedistrict gave the program the green light.

"We had support from the very beginning," she said."The machine was moving in that direction."

While the academy seems to be one of a kind inTexas, it points to a countercurrent beneath theroiling journalism industry: Even as the Internet ageand weak economy have upended traditional newsmodels, more Texas students have been enrolling injournalism classes than at any point in the pastdecade.

Uncertainty abounds. The school hopes its Emerging Media andCommunications Academy will eventually enroll about 100 students each year,

preparing many for the news industry before they graduate.

But neither the students nor their teachers know exactly what the profession will look like by the time these

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aspiring journalists leave high school.

Novel approach

In ninth-grade geography class, as their mainstream peers methodically progressed through the continents,the journalism students were reading a post-apocalyptic novel about children forced to fight to the death onlive television. Afterwards, they hopped on the news sites to look for wars or natural disasters that mightlead to such a scenario.

In English class, the children watched former Vice President Al Gore wax ecological in the global-warmingdocumentary An Inconvenient Truth. They weren't studying ice floes – they were looking for media bias.

"I want them to have also pulled out that this is a very anti-George Bush piece," whispered teacher ClaraCaussey from the back of the classroom.

Besides the school's four journalism teachers – one each for video, print, photography and advertising –core-subject teachers like Caussey have rewritten their curriculum for the academy's students, whom theyexpect to be teaching exclusively as the program fills up in future years.

Survival skills

Some classes are technical, blending traditional reporting skills like interviewing with training in video-editing software, digital cameras and eventually blogs and Web news – high-tech survival skills for aprofession that is constantly changing.

But many lessons, like the apocalypse assignment, are designed to broaden the teenagers' world view,forcing them to think outside the "Coppell bubble," as Kennedy phrases it.

She hopes the program will have an impact even on students who don't end up going into journalism.

"I'd love to say 'How wonderful if they could all be journalists,' but that won't happen," she said. "But it'll beOK, and hopefully they'll change the world around us."

The students, meanwhile, are learning that the world is already changing around them.

Trade in turmoil

"I'm worried there's not going to be a newspaper in 10 years," said 15-year-old Madison Weaver, who hasbeen determined to become a reporter since she watched Barbara Walters on ABC World News as a smallgirl.

"Journalism is just my thing," she said. "I just love, love writing, and I'm not interested in anything else."

Like many students in the program, Madison knows her chosen trade is in turmoil, though her teachers tendto frame it as a transformation.

"It's a big transition," said John Loop, 15. "You see some small or large newspapers are going out, andeverything is going online."

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An aspiring sports reporter, John still fights with his dad for the morning newspaper. But he can read thewriting on the wall.

"I don't want to be, like, offensive or anything," John said. "I feel like those jobs are opening so that I couldhave a job there."

Even before it became an academy, Coppell's journalism program was an exception.

Bucking the trend

The school has long staffed four journalism teachers. Many others make do with one, if that.

The student newspaper, The Sidekick, placed seventh at a national convention last year. Its TV station,KCBY, and its website both won awards from the Student Television Network this fall.

The journalism academy is the school's third. The first academy, for science, technology, engineering andmath, opened last year on the theory that students learn better in small, flexible environments. Kennedy saidthe already-popular journalism program was a natural fit.

While journalism students in Texas are growing – about 14 percent more public-school students enrolled inclasses last year than a decade before, according to the Texas Education Agency – the state may be ananomaly. Anecdotal reports from journalism teachers around the country indicate many school programshave seen cutbacks that would look familiar in many a newsroom.

Coppell's academy has few precedents. Officials with the Texas Association of Journalism Educators andthe national Journalism Education Association knew of none like it.

Familiar concept

But the concept is familiar to Steve O'Donoghue, who in 1985 helped found the Media Academy out of ahigh-school journalism program in Oakland, Calif.

In stark contrast to Coppell, the Oakland academy, which has since grown into Media College PreparatoryHigh School, was "100 percent minority," O'Donoghue said. It used journalism as "a hook" to lower dropoutrates among at-risk students.

"If you step back, forget about journalism for a second," he said. "The majority of kids who go into[vocational] programs don't go into that career. It's the skills they pick up that are valuable, not necessarilythe profession."

texas high school journalism academy

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