Providing an outlet for other views. Allow readers to express their opinions.

This is an important role from both a legal and ethical standpoint. Student media that want to avoid the limitations imposed by the Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier decision need to be student forums in policy or practice. That means, for one thing, they allow input from those beyond the journalism classroom in the form of letters, commentary and such.

Do realize, though, just saying you accept letters to the editor isn’t enough. Here’s the ethical part: In your policies, not just your mission, you need to think about how much you control those submissions.

If your letters policy says, in the first sentence, you are a forum and encourage letters but in the next sentence says you will edit for length and clarity, are you really being “open”? Even if you add the phrase “without changing the meaning,” is that possible to do? If I wrote an 800-word letter and you cut it to 400, even if YOU don’t think you changed my meaning, I’ll bet I would think you did. And if the policy says you will edit for “good taste” or even correct mistakes, have you limited my expression?

True, you don’t want just ANYTHING in your letters (that sounds like online comments, and that’s worth a whole separate blog!), but what if you indicate letters with problems will be returned to the writers with explanations and a chance to resubmit? At least then what you publish is still theirs and not yours.

So, as you write your mission, consider ways you are truly outlets for what others think. As a staff, go back over the list of roles and prioritize and then compare your results. Are you really as “newsy” as you thought? Are you a cheerleader for the school? A place for analysis? Missions aren’t right or wrong, but they should be what your staff believes it needs to do this year for your school and community. Good luck!

Entertaining readers. Report the humorous, amusing, unusual.

No publication wants to be all investigative, hard-hitting depth reporting. You would exhaust yourselves AND your readers. But entertainment doesn’t have to be silly or totally fluffy. Can you be creative? Can you tell your audience things it doesn’t already know? Can you avoid just plain silly?

The best of this type of writing probably comes in the form of features — not the cliche, but the unique. Don’t ask the foreign exchange student what his favorite American food is or what he likes about your school. Find a focus or find a news peg. Election coming up? Ask him what selecting a leader is like in his country.

And don’t expect to conduct the interview for this feature in five minutes in the cafeteria. Sit down someplace quiet and talk — and keep asking questions until the interviewee relaxes and begins to share anecdotes. That’s where the “humorous, amusing, unusual” will show up.

It’s part of the mission for professional journalists, but they generally know how to handle entertainment professionally. So know how to do that, too.

TOMORROW 10th and final possible role: Providing an outlet for other views.

Being a leader. Inform readers about problems, show them alternatives and solutions, persuade and influence their decisions.

Somehow, publications seem to have lost their interest in leading. No, that’s not true of all of them, but the need to attract an audience, keep those with short attention spans engaged and entertain with jazzy visuals or interactive elements often overshadow the hard work good persuasive journalism takes.

If you don’t have an editorial in your media — a place for your staff voice, a place to help others see ways to make positive changes — you’re missing a bet. This doesn’t mean whining or ranting, but it means finding solutions others have used or totally new ones, offering avenues of involvement for readers, explaining to them why they should take those avenues.

Parking fees are going up, and no one on campus is happy. What do other nearby schools charge? Less? So how do they trim their expenses? Student volunteers to work clean-up patrol and save the cost of paid maintenance staff? A cheaper way to make the hang-tags that show cars belong there? How could your school do that?

Student media can report the facts — interview your own administrators, interview those at other schools, cover all angles factually. THEN, on the editorial page, tell your audience what to do to make it happen.

That’s what leaders do — they take a stand for positive change, and student media, on an editorial page or labeled as staff opinion, can do that better than anyone else in a school….as long as the student journalists believe that is their role.

TOMORROW Role #9: Entertaining readers (yes, that’s still OK, too)

Offering interpretation and perspective. Show how events, issues and personalities are tied together and the effects they have on student lives.

This is the WHY of what is going on in your school and community and the HOW concerning its impact on your readers. This also means what’s published is not a rant or just the writer’s interpretation or perspective. Even commentaries and editorials and columns — good ones, at least — have background and context.

For instance, what do school board members or administrators say about the reason they instituted pay-to-participate? Where did they look for models to show how it works and what general effect it has on sports and activities? What have other schools in the area seen in their programs when they added this charge? What are the facts and figures? Opinions of experts and those who made the decisions?

Is it your role to offer that sort of depth when you can? If you’re a monthly publication, you’re probably not covering much breaking news, as we discussed about an earlier possible role. So…digging for the stories below the surface sounds like something your audience would want and something YOU would have the time and skills to provide.

True, it’s more work, but if YOU don’t interpret and offer local teen perspective on events, who will?

TOMORROW Role #8: Being a leader

Following professional standards. Adopt professional standards of journalism as a guiding light for your coverage.

Of course you want to be professional, right? You don’t want to look sloppy or juvenile. But when a post on the JEAHELP e-mail distribution list asks a style question or wrangles about topic coverage, at least one response essentially says, “Why are you so worried? You’re not the New York Times.”

Do you need to be so bothered about the use of courtesy titles? Why research an obscure AP Style question? No one will notice. Is it worth the hassle to cover a really serious, tough and controversial story? After all, you know your readers like some fun.

No, your audience probably won’t notice if it’s Wal-Mart or Walmart*, and some would prefer to look at a collage of summer vacation pics instead of an in-depth look at the impact of pay-to-play. But as you talk about your mission, think about how professional you want to be. You may not follow Associated Press style, but could you be consistent? You may have a bit of fluff, but could you write about topics that impact your readers?

Maybe you aren’t the New York Times, but you probably don’t want to be viewed as the Junior High Journal either.

* It’s Wal-Mart Stores Inc. when referring to the company, but individual retail stores, according to AP Style, should be Walmart, just in case you wondered.

TOMORROW Role #7: Offer interpretation and perspective

Providing the community with an image of your school. Help the community understand, and perhaps improve, how they view your school.

This MIGHT sound like public relations, and we already discussed how that relates to journalism — not so much. So can you let your readers in the community — parents, advertisers, board members, grandparents, neighbors — see what goes on inside the schoolhouse gate and still tell it like it is?

Yes, you can. In fact, you must. The ostrich-head-in-the-sand mentality that keeps some administrators from allowing their media to report on “problem” issues just doesn’t make sense. How can you improve anything if you don’t acknowledge the problem? And how can you acknowledge the problem unless everyone has the facts?

This, of course, means you need to do some solid reporting, not just offering opinions and rants.  Cafeteria food isn’t healthy? School buses seem dangerous? Lack of lockers means students lug around heavy backpacks? Get the facts from experts — a nutritionist to put the menu in perspective, a safety expert to analyze the bus situation, even a school nurse can address what those weighty packs really do.

(No, this doesn’t mean use only Web sources, but it does mean interviewing and researching to find the answers to your readers’ questions and to truly explain your school’s issues.

Showing others what’s going on also means reporting or featurizing classroom activities. When judging student media, I often wonder if some schools HAVE any courses going on! Coverage seems to be all about athletic events, dances, clubs, movies to see and restaurants to try.

But what about the new hand-held devices students are using to complete math tasks? The English 9 class using PBS and OpenSourceShakespeare to understand the Bard’s language? The marketing class promoting the school’s blood drive?

The good and the bad and the in between will give readers, especially those outside the school, a better glimpse of what your world of education is really like. Should this be a role of your student media? You decide.

TOMORROW Role #6: Following professional standards

This post focuses on visual entries (photos, page designs, infographics, alternative story forms, etc.). Visuals are a crucial part of any successful publication. May my observations of the work of others help you and your students this year.

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The No. 1 rule of creating visuals is simple: Find ways to enhance the reader’s understanding of the story. Effective visuals take just as much planning and discussion as effective stories. Simply throwing up random pictures or splashing a page with color doesn’t achieve this goal. It’s also never about showing off your abilities with certain software tools. If an idea doesn’t enhance communication, don’t do it. Some treatments became too flashy or were the product of poor planning.

Too many visual elements can become overwhelming if not placed properly. Less can sometimes be more. Be purposeful when designing a page. Choose only those elements that advance the concept you’re seeking to create. Discard others, even if good, that don’t achieve that goal.

Be sure to use some visuals. Readers don’t like endless blocks of gray text. One small (and somewhat poorly composed photo) on a page doesn’t do the trick.

Use solid design and composition principles. Find a dominant image to anchor the page. Run other photos and visuals subordinate in size and placement to the dominant image. This helps the reader navigate the page.

Use photos that have purpose. Don’t simply point the camera at something and shoot. Find ways of capturing emotion, interest or oddity. Look for the unusual. These make the most engaging shots.

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Again, adherence to basic principles makes all the difference.

Building morale and spirit. Stress the positive and help readers see the good side of the school year.

IS that a job of student media? It sounds more like public relations, like the job of the principal or PTA newsletter to me, but before anyone takes my word for it, let’s discuss what it means.

The operative words here are”stress” and “good side.” Any time reporting good news comes up when we talk about student media coverage, some slightly defensive student or adviser says, “But we need to show the good sides of our school.” Of course you do. Awards, athletic competitions, innovative and successful classroom projects — all those are definitely worth reporting.

But shouldn’t those already fall under “reporting the news” and “offering interpretation and perspective” and any number of the other 10 media roles? News shouldn’t all be bad.

Those topics are worth some editorializing on the opinion page, too. Sometimes the media are quick to be critical and slow to compliment an official or school administrator when something works out right. And they should be giving out well-deserved pats on the back, too.

So, in developing the mission and applying it through the year, consider putting “building morale” a ways down the list of media role priorities — not because you’re going to be the voice of gloom and doom and whining, but because you want to tell as many sides as you can of your stories and not just stress the positives.

TOMORROW Role #5: Providing the community with an image of your school

After wading through what seemed to be an endless pile (and nearly bleeding a green pen dry making comments), some common themes emerged.

Some of entries were stunning. They started with well-conceived ideas about important topics or issues such illegal immigration or school finances. They interviewed key sources to gain perspective, and the narrative of the story flowed well in an effort to inform the reader.

However, some serious flaws emerged as well. All the judges were asked to write some general comments about the entries they critiqued. Below are those I made about the writing entries, including some errors that were repeated across the board by students at many schools.

Use some of this critique to help your students improve their reporting and writing.

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The strongest entries were those that had a clear, narrow focus and sought to tell a story through local examples with plenty of detail and specific information. This included the need to talk to REAL people, not simply relying on Internet sources as a primary means of information.

This meant using a wide array of sources and probing for detail. Quotes were used effectively to help the reader better understand the topic. They went beyond trivial statements like, “This program is cool/uncool.” This is what makes a story a story—finding information that people will care to read through enriching detail about other people.

The weakest entries were those that were simply a “notebook dump” of information, gathered mostly from the Internet, with little or no clear focus. These pieces often barely scratched the surface of the actual story. I don’t remember finding any “topics” that weren’t worth pursuing. It was simply the execution that was off. Find the real focus of the story. Sources and questions will flow once you’ve established a focus.

Keep mechanics in mind. Spelling, grammar and punctuation errors add dings to your credibility. They are an eyesore. While you’ll never be able to avoid them completely, edit more carefully.

Also, bulky sentences filled with extraneous words add dead weight to the story. Readers are impatient people; don’t make them wade through junk just to get to the heart of what you’re trying to tell them. Be concise! This applies equally to paragraph lengths. At most, they should be two or three sentences. It’s uninviting to see a paragraph that looks like a long, gray block of text. Start a new paragraph every time you change speakers, ideas or use a direct quote.

Finally, students need to remember that news and feature stories are written in third person. The words “you,” “I,” “we,” “me” and “us” should only appear in direct quotes. Keep your opinion out of the story!!!!! This is not the place to act as a cheerleader for the school’s athletic department, nor is it appropriate to offer your commentary about events in the story. Let the sources do the talking.

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So in summation: look for an identifiable story about real people within a broader topic, find real sources, use the Internet as a tool, practice solid writing techniques, use short sentences and paragraphs, edit carefully, keep opinion out of the story unless it’s attributed to a source, and use third person.

Following basic journalistic principles like these leads to better stories that are informative and a pleasure to read.

In another post, I’ll post my comments about the visual categories I judged (photos, page design, alternative story forms, etc.).

Matter of record. Document the events of the school year.

But, as we saw two days ago when we started this process on the blog, monthly student newspapers and newsmagazines and definitely online and broadcast outlets aren’t as much about NEWS as we might have thought.

Some student media aren’t necessarily timely, and they also don’t have room for EVERYTHING that happens. Thus, are they really valuable as a matter of record? Would your newspaper archives be the place to look for all the details of what went on in Student Council? A list of curtain times for all the school plays? Details from all the board meetings?

Nope, there’s probably not room in the newspaper to cover everything, and there’s definitely not time on broadcast. While being a matter of record isn’t a bad thing, in your mission, it might not be as important as other media roles.

Now if you’re working on a mission for the yearbook, then it’s probably much higher up on the list….

TOMORROW Role #4: Build morale and spirit