Student Press Freedom Day is coming up Feb. 22 and provides an opportunity for business and editorial staffs to collaborate to shine a light on the importance of student journalism.
Student Press Freedom Day is an initiative spearheaded by the Student Press Law Center, with dozens of media groups collaborating for a national day of action when we celebrate the contributions of student journalists and the need to support their independence without censorship or threat to their advisers.
It’s increasingly important for student media outlets to educate campus communities on media literacy in order to build trust with their audiences. We know that the more people trust our media outlets, the more they’ll read what we publish, and the more readers we have, the more advertising our staffs can sell. The more we’re able to sell, the more our newsrooms are able to publish. It’s a constant cycle driving collaboration among staff, and bringing attention to student press freedom can help further every part of that cycle.
There are several ways that business departments can be involved with Student Press Freedom Day, on the day itself, or throughout the month. For more ideas of how your organization can celebrate, visit https://studentpressfreedom.org/50ways/
Plan an event
An on-campus event is always a great way to connect with the community. Partnering with your editorial team, you can help students, faculty and administrators on your campus understand the importance of student press freedom. The Student Press Law Center offers resources to help plan an event. Once you hold your event, be sure to tag CMBAM and SPLC in your social media posts so we can see what you come up with and share inspiration with other schools.
Solicit Donations
Student Press Freedom Day offers a chance to educate audiences on the importance of student journalism to society. Understanding that civic value can drive readers to become donors to your student media outlet. Download the Student Press Freedom Day house ads below, and use them wherever you’d like to help draw attention to the societal good your media outlet provides. If you have an online donation page for your organization, these ads could be used throughout your website and email newsletters to link to where your readers can donate.
Press Freedom Donation Small Rectangle (300px wide by 250px high)– Download Gif
For the entire month of September, CMBAM is all about training! Training students, staff members, and all other levels of employees can be overwhelming and, at times, even downright scary. So, what can you do to ensure you’re prepared to give your staff valuable and relevant training? Through my experience as the Marketing Director for Garnet Media Group at the University of South Carolina, I hope to provide some insights into what I’ve learned about training student media staff.
First, I’d like to outline the similar problems most student organizations face regarding training. At the top of this list are heightened turnover rates and student scheduling. Student media can be a tricky industry because most of its workforce is made up of, well … students. Students have many different time commitments and schedules, making staff retention difficult. Another problem many organizations face is translating training into experience. Training presentations over pizza and icebreakers (although very, very fun) only go so far when your staff starts to face the reality and challenges of their positions. With these problems in mind, I hope the following advice can help.
I have found that treating training more as learning and teaching has led to higher staff retention and performance. Training should provide learning opportunities for both the trainer and the trainee. As a trainer, your first task should be developing learning outcomes for your trainees. What do you want them to know? What do you want them to do? By fleshing these outcomes out, you will provoke more thoughtful questions, engagement and understanding from your trainees.
My second piece of advice may sound obvious, but it has truly helped me improve my training and increase my team’s retention. Make your training valuable. Make it matter to your staff. Your staff (especially students) wants to learn and connect their work in student media to their academics and careers. Feel free to dive into the complexities of student media and the specifics of their positions. This can help them understand their work’s value and why their position matters. In addition, incorporate concepts into your training that will provide value for your staff beyond their involvement in student media. Diversity, inclusion, equity competence, conflict resolution, cultural understanding and professional communication are all examples of skills that you can teach your staff that significantly improve their employability in the future.
I hope these pieces of advice can help improve the training practices of your organization or, at the very least, remove some of the pressure from your recruitment season. If you’re interested in more training advice and best practices, check out a recording of our panel discussion on training held over Zoom on Sept. 1 in the member resources section of the website, available only to CMBAM members logged in on the site.
