JOURNALISTS FIND REAL-WORLD EXPOSURE LIMITED

Administrators are too restrictive with school newspaper content, said some aspiring journalists attending a student press association meeting Wednesday.

About 325 student journalists from 21 area high schools converged on Southeast Missouri State University to attend the 22nd annual Southeast Missouri Student Press Association meeting, which brought experts and students together to promote better school newspapers and yearbooks.

Some of the students already have learned unfortunate lessons in journalism at their home schools, said Liz Lockhart, a former Missouri Journalism Teacher of the Year. Now a yearbook company representative, Lockhart helped found the association known as SEMSPA. She spent 20 years teaching and arguing for freedom of the press.

In 1988, a Missouri case taken to the U.S. Supreme Court prompted a ruling that students don't have a right to publish something their school administration deems is inappropriate.

There weren't guidelines set to determine what is inappropriate; so if an administrator doesn't want a school newspaper article published, it isn't.

Motions taken before the Missouri General Assembly calling for broader freedoms for student journalists have been voted down quickly.

"When you bring it up, the legislators almost laugh at you," Lockhart said.

"Whatever experience students get on the technical side -- interviewing and writing -- is good experience," she said. "But freedom of expression is a citizenship issue, and that's where they get shortchanged. We are training them to be a silent majority, and that's a crime."

At many schools, newspaper sponsors have come to expect censorship.

Sergia Pecaut, who teaches at St. Vincent High School in Perryville and oversees The Gleaner, said students benefit from journalism classes even if they don't get to write everything they want. No matter what career path they choose, journalism classes can teach students communication skills, Pecaut said.

"The newspaper will be a public relations tool in any school," Pecaut said. "In today's society, whether you are in public or private schools, there are too many politics involved."

Students, too, have learned hard lessons about what flies and what doesn't in student newspapers.

Liz Barkett and Courtney Maxcy work on The Bulldog Barker at Sikeston High School. While they said working on IBM machines, conducting interviews and composing the newspaper have helped prepare them for positions at a college paper, they haven't learned to write about real issues.

"Our paper gets sent out with the town newspaper every other Friday," Barkett said. "So now the principal pays a lot more attention to what we write because the parents will read it.

"What's the point of having a newspaper if you're only doing it to make a good impression?" she asked.

Maxcy said she and her classmates wanted to do a story on a student nominated to be Mr. Sikeston High School. He later was disqualified because the administration didn't feel he was a good representative of the school. The story didn't run.

"We don't even bother asking anymore," Maxcy said.

Another story not allowed at both Sikeston High School and St. Vincent dealt with teen pregnancy.

Jennie Starkey of The Gleaner staff at St. Vincent said the newspaper should be used to educate students, not just placate administrators.

"We are such a small school we don't have classes that teach about teen pregnancy, STDs or drunk driving," she said. "We could use the newspaper to educate students about these things."

Lockhart said movements are under way and have succeeded in some states that allow students greater freedom of the press. None has been successful in Missouri.