Scholastic journalism programs continue to have a life-changing effect
By R.J. Morgan
There are no two ways about it: scholastic journalism saved my life.
In 1998 I signed up for the elective newspaper class at Pearl High School as a listless, overweight freshman because, frankly, I didn’t know where else I might fit in. It was a big school, and I wasn’t an athlete, didn’t play an instrument, couldn’t draw or do math very well, etc. Maybe I could write? It was worth a shot.
When they couldn’t fit the course into my schedule, the counselor suggested I go ask the teacher if I could be her TA during a planning period and write for the staff that way. I did, and in her infinite kindness, Ms. Sandy Davis let me sit of an afternoon in her classroom and write stories. Oh, what a fateful decision that would turn out to be.
She asked me what I was passionate about.
“Professional wrestling,” I said, earnestly.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Well, then write about that,” she said, just as earnestly.
And I did.
“Ringside Chats with R.J. Morgan” debuted in the fall quarterly issue of the Pirate Speaks newspaper to, as I recall, little or no fanfare.
But I was hooked.
I started to write about more than professional wrestling. I wrote about new testing schedules and the baseball team and a lot of other goings-on around the school, too. It turned out I had a natural talent for storytelling (a family trait), and I began to work really hard at getting better at that craft with every assignment Ms. Davis would allow me.
When the year was up, Ms. Davis not only demanded I be on staff the next fall, she wanted me to be the editor. To be given such a responsibility (usually reserved for a senior) at such a young age, well it felt like someone kicking open a door and telling me this was the path I needed to walk down. I didn’t know where it would take me, but it seemed pretty clear that this was what I was meant to be doing at the moment.
I held that role for the next three years. Ms. Davis left after my sophomore year and was replaced by an excellent English teacher, Mrs. Donna Foster, who, in an amazing act of trust, pretty much gave me creative control over the entire publication. I set the publication dates and prices, I led the brainstorming meetings to plan each issue, I laid out the pages and I enforced the deadlines. We were a student-run publication in every sense of the word.
In that work, I found such deep meaning and purpose. We were the mouthpiece of our peers. Teenage documentarians of our little moment as the blue and gold tenants of PHS’s hallowed grounds.
Through the student newspaper, I developed a confidence and a skillset that the listless freshman version of myself could never have imagined. Scholastic journalism taught me how to organize my thoughts, gather information, talk to people and pay attention to details. It taught me the importance of accuracy, truth and fairness. It taught me the importance of keeping my own self organized so that I could spend the bulk of my time coaching others. It gave me a lane, an identity; a way I could use my talents to contribute to the world.
My parents were amazed. I’d never really applied myself like this in school before. One night I stayed so late, alone in the newsroom laying out pages, that I set the school’s alarm off when I left. Police cars came roaring in and I was questioned about my motives for hanging around the school so late; it was quite the scene.
Those skills have served me well. By the time I got to college at Mississippi State University, I was primed to cover a variety of beats, mostly sports related, for my campus newspaper, the Reflector. In that newsroom I would further find myself and my tribe, and by the time I graduated in 2007, I was Section Editor of the Year on a staff that had just won Best College Newspaper in the Southeast, writing regular freelance pieces for the Associated Press and several other regional news outlets.
But instead of chasing a full-time career in professional journalism, I had a strong desire to continue helping others find their voice. I took a position teaching social studies at Starkville High School, and, due to no one else really wanting the job, was given the reins of the Jacket Buzz newspaper and Yellow Jacket yearbook (we later added a broadcast, My Morning Jacket).
For the next six years, I worked tirelessly to create an empowering classroom environment for my students that was just like the one that’d had such an impact on me. On the weekends I still covered high school and college sports around the state (I just gave up my last freelancing gig with the Associated Press during the pandemic), but the bulk of my time was spent pouring into those kids.
And it was the best job I will ever have.
One day pretty early on in my first year of advising, I got a flier in the mail for a high school journalism workshop being hosted at Ole Miss by something called the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association. I rounded up my students, figured out all the paperwork necessary for a field trip (you wouldn’t believe it), and we headed north. My students had the best, most transformative day as a staff, and when I met legendary MSPA Director Beth Fitts, I knew I’d found a new North Star for what it meant to be a good teacher and student media adviser.
Fast forward to the present day and I’ve been MSPA director for 12 years. Beth Fitts retired in 2013, and we still grab lunch or coffee a couple of times a year. She remains one of my most sainted mentors.
While our organization continues to grow in size and stature, we aren’t immune to market conditions. Scholastic journalism, just like professional journalism, has faced significant disruption over the last couple of decades and continues to face strong headwinds today.
Budgets are tighter. Administrators more hawkish. Students more apathetic. A public more litigious.
Teachers–civil servants who are often paid far less than they’re worth–are caught between having to decide whether to defend their students’ right to free speech, one of our country’s founding principles, or lose their job like my friend and colleague Brenda Field did in Illinois last summer.
It’s a tough scene out there for the free speech crowd. Nevertheless, we press forward. We fight to inform, to educate, to empower and inspire.
Last spring MSPA hosted more than 450 high school journalists at our spring convention, our largest crowd since the pandemic. Just like they do at our fall convention at the University of Southern Mississippi, students spent the day learning from real journalists about how to cover their schools and communities more effectively. We’ll hope to meet or exceed that number when we gather again this spring in Oxford on Friday, March 28.
We offer every student media teacher in Mississippi free membership in the national Journalism Education Association and access to its vast curriculum resources. We host a free three-day workshop for advisers every summer in Oxford, where they commune with each other and learn best practices.
Our primary financial support comes from the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. The journalism department founded MSPA here in 1947, and without the continued support of the school, it wouldn’t be possible for MSPA to exist in its current form. We also enjoy great partnerships with other universities around the state and a variety of yearbook and media companies.
Two years ago, MSPA found a new physical home in the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics. The center committed a portion of its sprawling office space to the MSPA, plus additional staff resources. It signaled a major investment by the center in the future of scholastic journalism in Mississippi and the rest of the region.
It was also another full-circle moment.
The Overby Center is named in honor of former Freedom Forum CEO Charles Overby, who started his own career in the 1960s by, you guessed it, attending an MSPA workshop as the editor of his high school newspaper, the Provine Rambler, in Jackson, Miss. Unbeknownst to Overby, across town, his future wife Andrea was also student editor of the Murrah Hoofbeat.
A high school journalism love story?
This work changes lives in a lot of different ways.
Footnote–It’s been more than 25 years since I’ve followed professional wrestling closely, but I still believe it to be an unheralded rural artform worthy of study and cultural consideration. The new Mr. McMahon documentary on Netflix is a fine starting point.
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R.J. Morgan is instructional associate professor in the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi, director of the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association and a member of the Overby Center panel of experts.