My former high school newspaper, Smoke Signals from Choctawhatchee High School in Fort Walton Beach, FL, had the chance to cover a racial controversy that arose from another local high school’s attempt to perform the play “To Kill A Mockingbird.”
This controversy dates back to Sept. 18, when a panel met to discuss the issue of using the “N” word in the play after two black leaders in the community asked that the word be taken out. Initially, school officials honored that request on Oct. 23 until issues of copyright violations came up. Officials learned the literary context of the play could not be altered without permission. The community became involved and people wrote in to the town’s local newspaper, Northwest Florida Daily News, voicing their opinions. On Nov. 1, officials held another meeting where the decision was reversed to allow the students to perform the original play.
Smoke Signals editor and senior Amanda Sullivan said in an email interview:
The
only challenge we had was keeping up with the ever-changing decisions
of the county board. It seemed like every time we turned around they
were changing their attitude towards the decision they had just made.
This definitely made covering the issue more of a challenge.
This story is also an example of how you can use alternate story forms. The staff used a timeline to show the developing decision of the school officials and a facts box about the book To Kill a Mockingbird and the author, Harper Lee.
Megan Whitehurst, Smoke Signals junior staff reporter, wrote the story on the controversy. She said in an email interview:
was very interesting learning about the power of words and how one word
could cause so much controversy. You have to be very careful about what
you write or say because without even knowing it you can have a very
strong impact on someone. As a journalist I would say that it is
important to remember when reporting your story you must present both
sides of an issue and treat both opinions respectfully. Since I was
writing the article and not the editorial I had to keep my opinion out
of it so that students could form their own opinion based on what actually happened.
Read the coverage of the controversy and staff editorials on censorship.
