If your mother says she loves you, goes the old journalism adage, check it out. But what if the school superintendent tells you local schools are secure from intruders? The natural journalistic instinct is to check it out. But how?
As Poynter's Al Tompkins has documented in his Al's Morning Meeting column recently (
Oct. 9,
Oct. 10,
Oct. 16), more and more newsrooms are conducting their own tests of school security by sending staff members into the schools unannounced, often through unlocked back or side doors.
Tompkins urges journalists to wrestle with
a series of tough questions before undertaking such initiatives. The testing issue is not restricted to school security, of course. Poynter's Bob Steele proposed
a set of guidelines for a variety of testing scenarios back in 2001. One thing to consider, when deciding whether or not to test school security, is the school's reaction. One school district in central Ohio went into lockdown mode, apparently after a television crew attempted the same thing. We've reprinted
the letter that the superintendent sent to parents here.
Among the editors who checked in with Poynter recently about the testing question were Tom Marquardt, exeuctive editor of
The Capital in Annapolis, Md., and Alan D. Miller, managing editor/news of
The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio.
The Capital sent 12 of its 20 staff reporters to test the security at 56 schools across the community. Editors at the
Dispatch decided against a proposal that would have involved 50 reporters testing school security across central Ohio.
Poynter Online asked each editor to describe the decision-making process involved, as well as what's happened since. You'll find
Marquardt's report here, and
Miller's here.
