Budding Journalists

One of my journalism students turned in an opinion piece last week. His opinion was that I am a lousy teacher.

The complaint of this budding reporter -- let's call him Walter -- was that I had sent my students out to write stories for the school newspaper without ever teaching them how to write a story. And, given a normal dose of exaggeration, that's true.

As I explained to my class, I expected them to leave the classroom, look for news, write stories, and bring them back to me. Then I would do what an editor does: read the story, cut out the unimportant, uninteresting, or irrelevant, and send the reporter back to gather any missing information and rewrite.

It's trial and error. When I wrote my first big story at my first radio job, I concluded it with a stirring quotation from the Bible. My senior partner, a Mississippian named Dave Molpus who went on to become a Pentagon correspondent for National Public Radio, looked it over and said drily, 'Let's leave the Bible out of it, shall we?'

Journalists have to learn a different way of thinking and writing, where fact comes first, before description, interpretation, or elaboration. One of my better writers turned in a story about the induction ceremony for the National Honor Society that contained every detail except the names of those inducted. 'That's the news in this news story, isn't it?' I asked.

They also have to learn persistence, even to the point of discourtesy. One student brought me a story about an art teacher who'd taken a leave to have a baby. It contained the name of the child, his weight and gender, and comments from another art teacher, but not a word from the mother herself. I told him to call her up and get a quote. He looked dubious -- call a teacher at home? He returned in a few minutes to say he'd called, but there was no answer.

'Try again,' I told him. Off he went. This time he returned saying that the other art teacher had told him not to bother the new mother with phone calls. I told him to send her an e-mail. He threw up his hands. But he eventually got the quote.

What bothers Walter and the others is that in trial-and-error learning, the learner inevitably fails at first, and inevitably must try again. This offends the whole spectrum of high school learners -- the committed students hate to fail and the indifferent students hate to try again.

My students think I should give them a model for how to write a story. (Not just students, either -- one concerned parent e-mailed me to ask if his son had been given such a model.) Then, as they see it, they imitate the model, and receive a grade based on the accuracy of their imitations.

But in all my writing courses, I ask students to tell their own stories, not to imitate mine. I tell them to think of themselves as writers, not students -- to get the story right, not the right grade. The beauty of this particular course is that if you get the story right, it goes into the newspaper where everyone in school will see it. Then, I hope, they will feel something like the exhilaration and dread I felt in that first radio job: I was finally doing something that counted, something consequential, something where the reward for success or penalty for failure would be more than a mark in a gradebook.

I gave Walter back his opinion piece with some suggestions about supporting his argument with facts. Then I called his mother to explain that her son was in danger of failing the course, not because he thought I was a bad teacher, but because he hadn't turned in enough stories.

Mothers are the best motivators. Walter showed up the next day with four new stories. They weren't perfect, but the process had begun.