An editorial by East County Magazine editor Miriam Raftery
Grossmont College has announced plans to eliminate Media Communications 132,
the class which creates the campus newspaper, The Summit. The
decision, made due to state budget cuts, would not only eliminate the school
newspaper. Instructor Christy Scannell warns, “Most critical, if the
class is canceled, students will be unable to complete the cross-media journalism
major…which could result in its demise. Students interested in print journalism
would need to find another school or another major.†She asks your help
to save the students’ newspaper.
Grossmont has no online news source. Closing the newspaper would result
in clear censorship of student views as well as eliminating training for future
journalists. “What if all colleges were to decide to cut their campus
news organizations to reduce budgets?†Scannell wrote in Society of Professional
Journalists local newsletter, SPJ Journal.
As a journalist who has written for numerous East County newspapers before
founding East County Magazine, I can tell you that there is a severe shortage
of journalists in East County. Ask any local news editor. One regional
publication went months with no one to cover city council hearings. Finding
writers to cover events in backcountry communities is even harder. Now
East County is about to lose a primary training ground for community journalists. Most
cash-strapped local publications use interns from our community colleges, and
those will vanish, too, meaning you’ll see more fluff and less news.
President-Elect Barack Obama recently noted that writing skills help students
entering the job market. Of all the things to cut, why this?
This is not the first local attempt to shut down a student newspaper. Fallbrook
High School administrators closed the students’ newspaper after it revealed
the district superintendent refused to close the school after a fire marshal
asked to use the facility as an evacuation center during the 2007 wildfires. Students
had also published an editorial critical of the school’s abstinence-only sex
education policy. The newspaper won first place in a national journalism
contest for high school newspapers, but remains closed down in direct retaliation
for defying administration orders against printing the stories.
Censorship of student views is a very, very dangerous precedent – as is eliminating
training programs for journalists in our public schools. First
amendment freedoms are at stake.
What might be cut instead? Scannell suggests starting with administrator’s
salaries, which have not fallen prey to the budget axe. Or perhaps it’s
time to rethink state taxation levels to assure that important public education
programs aren’t gutted. Also in today’s news, the University of California
regents announced a 6% reduction in freshman admissions. Tuitions have
been raised through the roof. San Diego State University has halted admission
of “automatic†transfer students from our community colleges, also due to budget
cuts. So where else are aspiring journalism students to go?
Christy Scannell asks that readers help save her media communications class
and the student newspaper at Grossmont College by sending an e-mail to tina.pitt@gcccd.edu and
to Sunny Cooke, Grossmont College’s president, at sunita.cooke@gcccd.edu. You
can also contact the district’s new chancellor, Dr. Cindy Miles at cindy.miles@gcccd.edu,
call 619-644-7573 or e-mail the Vice Chancellor at dana.quittner@gcccd.edu.
For the sake of our children’s futures, I urge you to raise your voice and
urge that Grossmont College preserve its student newspaper, journalism
training, and First Amendment freedoms.