WASHINGTON — There’s a fight brewing over a principal’s proposed review process of a school newspaper in a Northwest Washington school.
Students who staff the The Wilson Beacon, at Woodrow Wilson High School, are upset that principal Kimberly Martin wants to be the one who approves the stories they write.
“I was worried that students and writers of the Beacon might not address the boundary pushing stories that we did in the past,” said Helen Malhotra, 16, the paper’s co-editor.
WTOP reached out to Martin and got a response from Anna Gregory, a spokeswoman for D.C. Public Schools. Gregory said high schools are institutions of learning and that a journalism class is meant to prepare students for careers in journalism.
“Prior review is a common and expected practice, most assuredly for students who could face the threat of libel or slander, thus placing the entire school in jeopardy,” Gregory said.
However, Malhotra said the newspaper “has been a prior review-free student newspaper for as long as it has been in existence.”
Initially, Malhotra said, students took their concerns to the principal.
Feeling that wouldn’t be enough, students took to the Internet, started an online petition and published an editorial that criticized the principal’s decision. The editorial resulted in lots of online support for the student journalists.
On Monday, Gregory said Martin sat down with student advisers and came up with an agreement that did not remove the prior-review policy, but allowed advisers to approve articles.
Malhotra said advisers have always overseen the story-selection process. Students hope a review process can be developed under which the principal wouldn’t need to review what is written.
Malhotra said she doesn’t want to start a fight between the principal and the paper, and that the students only want to show that the community supports uncensored student journalism.
