The high school drama in Springdale provides a veritable case study in the challenges and perils of journalism, and maybe life.
Student journalists at Springdale's Har-Ber High School waded into a sensitive and controversial subject of great reader interest, investigated it effectively over time and produced an expansive and informative special report in the school paper, the Herald.
It was that six Har-Ber football players who transferred last year to Springdale High appeared to have done so for athletic purposes rather than the academic ones supposedly required of such a transfer under school district policy.
Bravo. It was one of those revelations that you knew without knowing but needed to see in print.
I wish I could have edited the copy before it was published but, hey, we all could use editing, especially those who put "hey" in the middle of their paragraphs.
The school administration wanted to see and approve the article before publication, but the faculty adviser, 13-year veteran Karla Sprague, declined. She stood by her students and was ennobled by a reprimand.
It's a very good day when you can mix defense of a free press with defense of academic freedom.
The school newspaper's takeout on a matter of community sensitivity upset people in town, as big newspaper spreads on matters of community sensitivity are prone. That made the school administrators nervous, as school administrators are prone. That led to an official Springdale School District decision to order the report's removal from Internet posting.
All that meant was that the students did well. Powers-that-be don't bother censoring boring, irrelevant or insignificant articles.
Then the district administration reversed itself and permitted the re-posting of the article after a nationwide free-press outcry that taught the grownups two lessons you'd think they'd have learned long before.
One is that you should do your legal research on student journalistic rights, which plainly exist in Arkansas law, before you go around suppressing articles. The other is that you only increase the attention to a work of journalism if you seek to squash it. People who'd never have bothered to read the piece were compelled by the controversy to devour every word.
The student journalists appeared before the school board last week and made statements typical of bright and eager young people. Their comments were precocious, wise, profound, endearing and, in their youthful innocence, both discomforting to jaded adult consciences and naïve.
Halle Roberts, editor of the student paper, merely synopsized journalism and maybe even humanity in this comment to the board: "Nobody said journalism was going to be easy, and we're learning that at a very young age. So, honestly, I thank you for giving us this experience because we have been taught there's always going to be someone saying, 'This is wrong, you're wrong, be quiet,' when we know that we are right."
Amen. That goes for The New York Times and Donald Trump as much as for the Har-Ber Herald and a few football players and their parents.
But then the young student editor, alas, contradicted herself, saying, "But also, it takes away our learning experiences for our careers, because we're not going to have to do this in the real world. There's not going to be someone standing over us saying, 'Well, that might hurt someone's feelings, we can't put that in the press.'"
I was similarly naïve as a cub reporter. When people in Conway were giving me grief over pieces I was writing in the early '70s for the local Log Cabin Democrat, I told someone that I wished the Arkansas Gazette would hire me so that I wouldn't be bothered by such petty provincialism. The daughter of a veteran Gazette journalist overheard and scoffed. She mentioned something about a loss of advertising and circulation during a school integration crisis.
So, you were right the first time, editor Roberts, about the thorough and valuable learning experience.
Ideally, there indeed will be someone in the adult real world standing over you and pressuring you on every sensitive, controversial and important matter you seek to publish.
You'll have an editor forcing you to be fair and complete and accurate. You'll have a publisher concerning himself with business viability--bravely, one hopes. On the biggest stories, you'll need for your employer to have on retainer a good lawyer who will devour your work for libel and liability.
Go see the movie called The Post. Put yourself in the shoes of publisher Katharine Graham as her staff proposes to publish classified information in the interest of a free press and democracy while she deals with taking her company public.
By being scared and acting on that fear, and by being a bully, and by acting in shortsighted self-interest, your school administration prepared you well for major elements of the real world.
Now, with a little higher education, you'll be ready to cover the White House.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 12/16/2018