journalism lesson plans high school

Lesson 1: Journalism

Lesson plan.

What separates journalism from other kinds of information out there? Would you know reliable reporting if you saw it? This lesson introduces students to journalistic standards and ethics. Students learn basic markers of high-standards reporting based on the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. They flex their new skills by analyzing a variety of examples to identify what reliable reporting looks like.

Web Activity Link: https://www.icivics.org/node/2518248/resource

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This resource was created with support from the Raab Family Foundation.

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• Journalism_Lesson Plan.pdf
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I find the materials so engaging, relevant, and easy to understand – I now use iCivics as a central resource, and use the textbook as a supplemental tool. The games are invaluable for applying the concepts we learn in class. My seniors LOVE iCivics.

Lynna Landry , AP US History & Government / Economics Teacher and Department Chair, California

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Lesson 2: misinformation.

Lesson 3: Bias

Lesson 4: opinion & analysis, mini-lesson a: monetization.

Mini-Lesson B: Satire

Mini-lesson c: algorithms & you, mini-lesson d: privacy policies & you, newsfeed defenders.

NewsFeed Defenders Extension Pack

See how it all fits together!

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Missouri School of Journalism

University of missouri, resources for high school teachers.

Missouri School of Journalism high school journalism project: Free, online teaching resources for scholastic journalism teachers.

Choose from 25 modules to help you teach skills used in journalism, yearbook and related topics.

Individual module landing pages set you up with an overview of the lesson’s activities:

• Complete lesson plan
• “Do” activities
• Worksheets, examples and answer keys to support activities
• Readings and resources
• Various types of formative assessment
• A summative assessment at the end of each lesson in the form of a 10-question multiple choice quiz with feedback on correct and incorrect answers
• The plans also state the learning objectives to which those activities and readings are aligned and sets the expectations.

Please contact Professor Amy Simons at  [email protected]

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Journalism and Media Literacy

Resources for teaching journalism and media literacy using new york times content.

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65 superior rankings awarded, 365 students recognized in Spring 2024 NSMC

The National Student Media Contests were all completed online and on site for the 2024 Spring JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention in Kansas City. In all, 824 students competed in photo, broadcast, graphic[…]

JEA names Alice Scott of Texas as 2024 Journalist of the Year

By Joe Humphrey, JEA Journalist of the Year coordinator She got her start in theater, playing characters such as Toto, Tinker Bell and the Cheshire Cat, but the brightest spotlight[…]

JEA honors Landon D’Alessandro of Florida as 2024 Aspiring Young Journalist

By Joe Humphrey, MJE, Journalist of the Year coordinator With a portfolio that includes a look at the dangers of Tik-Tok, the rise of pickleball and the popularity of the[…]

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The Fall JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention is a semiannual gathering of high school journalists and advisers sponsored by the Journalism Education Association and its partner, the National Scholastic Press Association. The associations partner to prepare hundreds of practical and professional learning sessions, from high-profile keynotes to specific, problem-solving breakouts, hands-on workshops and discussion groups.

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Simply put, the best professional organization available for journalism educators. From the conventions to the curriculum to the listserv, there is no better source for information about teaching journalism. If you’re not a member you’re doing yourself, and your students, a disservice.

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Journalist’s Trade

March 15, 2001.

Sparking a Passion for Journalism in High School

A journalism association works to strengthen a tenuous but invaluable resource., diana mitsu klos.

Not long ago in The New York Times, foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman paid homage to Hattie M. Steinberg, his high-school journalism teacher. “I took her intro to journalism course in 10th grade, back in 1969, and have never needed, or taken, another course in journalism since,” the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner wrote. “She was that good.”

Friedman is among the legions of newspaper folk who say their passion for journalism was sparked in high school. Yet the leaders of most scholastic journalism organizations say that despite some bright spots, high-school newspapers today are not in the best of health. It is estimated that 20 percent of high schools lack a student newspaper, most notably in urban areas and rural communities. At those schools where newspapers exist, the situation is often tenuous. Concerns abound about censorship, dwindling resources, veteran teachers who retire and are replaced by untrained newspaper advisers, scheduling of classes that makes it virtually impossible for students to take electives (such as courses in journalism), and the perception among some aspiring journalists and their advisers that the professional press is not interested in nurturing them.

With such circumstances at the high-school level, it’s no wonder that newspaper editors lament the difficulty of finding and retaining staff and accredited university journalism programs scramble to get students into the print journalism track. “Teens who don’t get exposed to hands-on journalism are being denied not only a potential career path, but also miss out on gaining a better understanding of the role media play in our society,” said Richard A. Oppel, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and editor of the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman. “A lack of scholastic journalism programs is also a key factor in why newsrooms struggle with increasing the diversity of the staff.”

Last year The Freedom Forum conducted a survey about newsroom diversity issues and learned that 22 percent of white journalists cited working on a high-school newspaper as a “very influential” factor in their career choice. The percentages are higher for journalists of color: 26 percent for Hispanic Latinos, 28 percent for Asian Americans, and 31 percent for African Americans.

In the spring of 2000, with the financial support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, ASNE developed and launched an ambitious national high-school journalism project that seeks to jump-start and revitalize scholastic journalism. With a $500,000 planning grant, ASNE has developed and launched three multi-year programs to train teachers, nurture aspiring journalists, and share information on the Web.

This summer, for the first time, about 200 teachers committed to advising student newspapers will take part in a two-week, for-credit newspaper program at six accredited colleges of journalism across the country. They will emerge from the ASNE High School Journalism Institute better informed about newspaper operations, practices, news values, and ethics. Tuition and graduate credit hours will be covered by the program, which will also provide teachers with a subscription to their hometown newspaper for classroom use, books and periodicals for a school journalism library, and memberships in regional and national scholastic journalism groups. Six universities have been selected to administer the program from among 31 accredited schools of journalism that applied: Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, Kent State University in Ohio, Hampton University in Virginia, the University of Maryland, the University of South Florida in Tampa, and the University of Texas at Austin.

At the start of this year, 27 daily newspapers and their 31 high-school partners received technology grants of up to $5,000 to launch a student newspaper or improve an existing one. In some instances, a local college journalism program signed up as a partner as well.

• The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Wakefield School and the University of Arizona are working together to produce a monthly student newspaper that will be distributed to 600 school families. To bring attention to the project, The Arizona Daily Star will print and distribute a special bilingual edition of the student newspaper to 7,000 local families. The partners will also work with students to create a fine arts publication that highlights photojournalism.
• At Kakankee High School in Illinois, a 13-year-old laser printer and 12- year-old scanner are giving way to iMacs and digital cameras. Teacher Cheryl Benoit says the upgrade is “a dream come true.” Students will work under the tutelage of their adviser and staffers from The Daily Journal. The newspaper will also offer summer internships to promising teens.
• The Philadelphia Daily News has designed a journalism curriculum to be taught by newsroom staffers to supplement work being done in a communications class at William Penn High School. The Daily News is working with a teacher at the school to set up e-mail mentoring and job shadowing. The ASNE grant will be used to purchase desktop publishing software and computers so the students can regularly publish a school newspaper.

A second round of 20 ASNE Partnerships will be funded later this year for the 2002 calendar year. Also, a new Web site created by ASNE, ( www.highschooljournalism.org ) received 200,000 hits in November. Content is geared toward students interested in journalism, their teachers and advisers, guidance counselors, and newspaper editors. The site features skill-building exercises, sample lesson plans, a spotlight on high-school newspapers throughout the country, interaction with professional journalists, and updates on scholastic press freedom issues.

“The response to this project from newspaper editors across the country has been tremendous,” said Susan Bischoff, chair of ASNE’s Education for Journalism committee and deputy managing editor of the Houston Chronicle. “So many of us fondly remember our first forays into journalism, the support that others gave us, and the hard lessons we had to learn. It’s our responsibility to grow the next generation of journalists. We’re in this for the long haul.”

Diana Mitsu Klos is senior project director of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Reston, Virginia. Along with the high-school journalism project, she also supervises programs focused on journalism credibility, strengthening the ties between college journalism professors and daily newspapers, and training editors from abroad. Prior to joining ASNE in 1996, she was managing editor of the Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal. She has also worked for the Norwich (Conn.) Bulletin, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, and The Daily Journal in Vineland, New Jersey.

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Summer 2004: journalist’s trade introduction, publisher, editor and reporter, the press and the presidency.

Teaching Journalism: 5 Journalism Lessons and Activities

You and your students will absolutely love these journalism lessons! The beginning of a new school year can be hectic for journalism teachers who are tasked with simultaneously teaching new journalism students who don’t have any journalism experience while also planning and publishing content for the school newspaper.

If your class is anything like mine, it is a mix of returning and new students. This year, I only have three returning students, so it is almost like I am starting entirely from scratch.

Here are 5 journalism lessons to teach at the beginning of the year

1. staff interview activity.

One of the very first assignments I have my students do is partner up with a fellow staff member that they don’t know and interview them. This activity works on two things: first, it helps the class get to know one another. Secondly, it helps students proactive their interviewing skills in a low-stakes environment.

For this activity, I have students come up with 10 interview questions, interview one another and do a quick write-up so that students can have practice recording their interviews.

Before this activity, I go over interviewing skills with my students. We discuss the dos and don’ts of interviewing, we brainstorm good interviewing questions, and we talk about the need to go beyond simple answer questions.

2. Staff Bio

Another great activity for the beginning of the year is to have students write their staff bio. This provides students with an opportunity to write in the third person while also providing the most important information.

For my staff bios, I give students 80-100 words. I have them write their bios in the third person and in the present tense.

3. Collaborative News Story

For our first news story of the school year, I like to write one collaboratively as a staff. We go over the basics of journalism writing and then write together in one Google Doc. I do this as a learning activity so that new staff can see how we write journalistically. First, I have students work together in small groups to write the lead. Then, as a class, we craft one together. From there, we move on to building the story.

As we write the story, as a staff, we can then see what kind of information we need. I assign small groups of students to interview people and find quotes. Those groups then add that information to the story.

Once it is written, we edit and review the story together before it is published. This activity is particularly helpful because students get to see how we format quotes in our stories, how we refer to students and teachers in our stories, and how we go about the news-gathering process.

Once our collaborative story is done, new staff then have the green light to begin writing their own stories.

4. The News Determinants

You can also read more in-depth about the news determinants with this blog post about teaching the five news determinants .

5. AP Style Writing

As students are writing their first stories, I like to teach students about AP Style . I use this instructional presentation, and students assemble their AP Style mini flip books that they use as a reference all year long.

The news determinants and AP Style lessons are included in my journalism curriculum with many other resources that will make teaching and advising the middle school or high school newspaper much easier.

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Story ideas lesson plans, asne lessons created for use with the story ideas training module.

Day 1 Story Ideas lesson Story Ideas PowerPoint – Day 1

Day 2 Story Ideas lesson Story Ideas PowerPoint – Day 2 Funnel Graphic Organizer

Day 3 Story Ideas lesson Maestro Graphic Organizer Beyond Maestro Question Sheet

Other ASNE Lessons

• Story Generators A two-day lesson to get students to think of original and interesting story ideas. First by relating news events to the school, second by asking them to develop questions prior to interviews.
• Thinking Like a Reporter How can story ideas be generated? By training students to think like a reporter — by seeing the potential of stories everywhere and then choosing the most immediate and interesting one.
• Effective Reporting: What Is It and How Do You Do It? A plan to take young reporters to the next level by helping them to identify who to talk to and how to talk to them.
• Finding Local Story Ideas Students will gather story ideas in a five-minute walk around school and analyze those ideas to be sure they have the qualities of good news writing.
• Basic Writing and Beat Reporting A unit with four individual lesson plans exploring writing style, newspaper beats, coverage and minimum standards of a staffer, and the importance of editing.
• Story Idea Treasure Hunt This series of lessons helps students use accessible resources to find and develop good story ideas. Students discover how readily-available resources on campus become story ideas with a little attention and teamwork.
• Localizing News for School News Media Students will study the local newspaper for stories to be localized and then present their ideas for doing so.
• News: Researching, Interviewing, Reporting and Writing A lesson that gets at the heart of reporting and writing an article and goes through all the steps of doing so. Includes two excellent handouts.
• Developing Story Ideas Teaching students how to develop specific and feasible story ideas.
• Story Ideas: In-Depth Reporting Reporting is a basic skill of journalism. This lesson explores story ideas and sources used by reporters in developing their stories.

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Opinion | Journalism schools must move beyond reporting to prepare graduates for modern media roles

As journalism rapidly evolves, j-schools must think critically about curriculums and equip graduates with skills for emerging roles across media..

The field of journalism is evolving. Journalism schools are a crucial part of that process, as they teach students the necessary skills to get starting jobs that hopefully turn into blossoming careers.

This task, aimed at equipping students for not just a job but a career, has grown increasingly complex.

Teaching a young journalist demands more than training them in traditional storytelling skills, and now must include, at minimum, a cursory understanding of the larger digital ecosystem, product management, audience engagement, user experiences, revenue streams, and more. If journalism schools want to succeed in their mission, they must teach students to succeed across the whole industry, not just as reporters.

Historically, the relationship between journalism education and the professional world was straightforward: Journalism schools are a part of a longstanding apprenticeship model, in which the industry outsourced the “greenest” of years to a trade school. Schools prepared students, who were then readily absorbed by the industry.

Most journalism schools focused on teaching the trade, not the academic study of journalism as an intellectual pursuit. Yes, Ph.D. programs exist, but that’s not the bread and butter of journalism education. Students sign up for these programs out of career ambitions.

Reporting and writing remain table stakes, but students now need to be equipped with skills that go beyond storytelling and lead to entirely different career paths, still within the confines of media and journalism. A great case in point is how the industry and schools adapted to social media. The growth of social media spawned entirely new entry-level job titles like “social media producer.” Whereas traditional entry-level reporting jobs led to a career path that would have ended in an editor-in-chief title, these new jobs moved onto careers that culminated in a title such as head of audience.

Perhaps because it could be understood under the “storytelling” rubric, many journalism schools were quick to adapt and adopt new courses, methodologies of teaching and a broadening of the trade they taught to prepare students for these new social media jobs. While some institutions have adeptly navigated this shift — going even further by incorporating data journalism, social media strategy, and even the basics of coding into their curriculums — others lag behind.

The next disparity that will emerge, however, will be between journalism schools that expand their charge beyond teaching “storytelling” to include teaching all the career paths upstream of product, revenue, audience, and more. A journalism school that does not prepare its students to at least understand these elements of our industry is limiting its students’ potential for success.

Too often, I come across journalism schools that only consider “storytelling” under the charge of things they are teaching students. This disparity will create gaps in the ecosystem, leaving some new graduates ill-prepared for the realities of the journalism landscape.

And yes, there are schools and programs making great progress in this vein, especially around product management . There are other schools, however, that are producing graduates only capable of stepping into the editorial space, and are ill-equipped to even recognize the important, well paid, impactful roles in media that keep the ecosystem driving forward.

The emergence of new career paths within journalism — such as audience strategy, product management, and the intertwining of editorial and revenue considerations — highlights the need for a more radical approach to journalism education. These roles are as pivotal as traditional reporting, shaping the way content is created, distributed, and monetized.

For journalism schools to truly serve their purpose, they must evolve just as the industry does.

Opinion | Where did the sun go? A look back at a special day and the media coverage around it

News networks went all-in on coverage of what was just the second total solar eclipse visible from the US during the 21st century.

At nonprofit newsrooms, is good journalism but sparse audiences a recipe for irrelevance?

Nonprofits offer hope in a dire media world. But, at too many startups, disappointingly few readers actually see the work.

RFK Jr. said that Jan. 6 ‘protestors carried no weapons.’ Evidence shows that’s not true

129 defendants charged in the attack were charged with ‘using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer’

Here’s your chance to train with a journalist so dedicated, he’ll walk to work in a blizzard

Kerwin Speight is leading the Poynter Producer Project, a workshop designed to enhance the skills of TV and video producers

Opinion | Women’s basketball takes the spotlight with sensational performances … on and off the court

This weekend’s games shattered ESPN’s viewership numbers for all basketball games — men and women, college and professional.

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