COVID’s toll on the scholastic newsroom
Are we losing a generation of reporters and editors thanks to COVID?
Possibly.
A number of reporters and editors are leaving the COVID beat and some the profession entirely. Why?
COVID is the story of a generation. Coverage of this crisis will make careers just as Watergate made Woodward and Bernstein, and as WWII made Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Yet it’s destroying some reporters and editors.
Olivia Messer’s story at Study Hall dug into some of the causes:
“An editor suggested that she might be suffering from “moral injury,” a psychological term for the damage done when a person feels they might have perpetrated, witnessed, or failed to prevent acts that violate their moral and ethical values.”
As a high school journalism teacher, I must acknowledge that I’m at a bit of an odd nexus: teaching and journalism. Teachers are also leaving the profession in greater numbers exacerbating a national teacher shortage.
VPM’s Ian Stewart talked to former fifth grade teacher Brandy Samberg and her answers echo what my colleagues say daily:
“The job didn’t pay enough for the amount of work I was doing,” she says. “Morale was low. We felt like there were times where even though we were professionals, we weren’t treated as such. And the expectations were just insane.”
The Scholastic Newsroom
My student-reporters can’t leave my class to do any reporting due to the district’s desire to maintain social distancing. So they “report” using aggregation, what I call research reporting. They read a bunch of news reports on a topic and turn that into a new story written for our audience.
But it’s not really reporting. And it is absolutely soul crushing.
Our social media editor can’t really do her job because attendance is limited at sporting events—our biggest driver of site traffic. The three girls set at the start of the year to be “video producers” can’t really do their job because of covid protocols for social distancing. It’s a complaint that’s repeated over and over.
Sure, we can do some reporting via telephone and Zoom calls, but there’s no real replacement for getting out there and talking to a source face-to-face.
I’m proud of the reporting we were able to do despite the restrictions.
Rolling coverage for two weeks at the beginning of the pandemic and shut down here in Pennsylvania.
136 stories in just over a year of the pandemic:
How to tell if the thing you’re feeling is COVID or allergies
How a local employer of many high school students, Hersheypark, is going to reopen this summer
How the pandemic is impacting the recruiting process for high school athletes
How neck gaiters make wholly ineffective masks
Debunking the claims by then-President Trump that injecting disinfectants would be an effective Covid treatment
Explainers about how soap, simple boring, soap kills coronavirus
Editorial about cyberbullying during the pandemic
But I’m worried about my students. The intensity and length of this crisis is grinding and relentless. They see so many interesting and enriching (and fun) activities that simply cannot happen this year without major adjustments or are cancelled entirely.
The cross country team didn’t get to compete in Districts because of a Covid shutdown. Many, many games and matches have been cancelled or rescheduled. The softball team has a brutal stretch of 5 games in 6 days, all with a single serviceable pitcher for the team as many girls didn’t go out for the team this year over covid concerns.
No field trips. Not one. All year.
No guest speakers. Zoom is a fine tool, but it’s no substitute.
We’ve been fortunate. Despite multiple shutdowns for rising positive cases, none of our students or staff have died. Most of my student-reporters don’t want to cover the pandemic any more. So they write movie reviews and lifestyle stories about the newest diet fad.
It’s all too dark.
Teens are masters of living in the moment. It’s difficult for them to see past lunchtime much less into the fall. We’ll all be grateful to put this year behind us.
My fellow journalism teachers around the country also report decreases in staff—many high school newspapers are extracurricular clubs—and funding for next year. I cut everything but the budget for the website.
No field trips, no competitions, no magazines to be inspired by, no new equipment, just a year of belt tightening.
