Melissa Wantz: Notes from West Egg

As of tomorrow, I am a journalism adviser. Officially. Not in my dreams. Not in my plans. Not just on paper. Not ideally. But really, practically, wonderfully. School starts tomorrow. Journalism 2.0 meets for the first time. As a former journalist, there is a part of me that can’t believe how excited I am about this opportunity to launch a brand new class, program and organization at my high school. It’s small stuff, after all, compared to the rigors and prestige of working for my county’s largest newspaper back in my 20s and 30s, compared to writing a column (back before there were blogs). I used to think teaching journalism would be, well, kind of boring. A step down the ladder. A move in the wrong direction. A bore.

But that was also back when journalism was a one-way street and limited to the printed page. Back when “news” didn’t make a high school paper because every issue was at least a week old when it landed from the printer. Being a high school journalism teacher in the 2.0 world is quite a bit different than hoping 500 or so fragile tabloid copies get into the right hands, and I have had a lot of fun this summer developing from scratch an online news site that has the potential — if not the practicality — to reach around the globe.

I’m wondering if it’s possible to accurately convey to the 30 students who show up in Period 5 tomorrow just what power I’m turning over to them. The power of this broad, instant reach. The power to make their voices heard like those darn persistent Whos in “Horton Hears a Who.” We are here, we are here, we are here! Do they realize, really realize, what the protection of the First Amendment and state and federal law confers on them? That their online news site cannot be shut down, taken away, denied? That their public forum cannot be excised from the course schedule by a hostile party, unlike “Publick Occurrences,” the first American paper, which was forbidden, burned and its publisher jailed back in 1690? That their adviser cannot be fired or forced out of her position (not in California anyway).

Is it possible to really communicate the difference that exists from just 10 years ago for ordinary people to be heard? My students were born in 1992-94. They’ve never really known a world without email and Google and PayPal. They don’t remember a time without FaceBook or MySpace or YouTube. It’s so easy to communicate now. Instantly. At no cost. With friends, with enemies, with strangers. The gatekeepers are dead, dying or irrelevant. Mostly anyways. The kids have no idea.

I will start class tomorrow with a welcome and an attempt to give them perspective. The first newspaper, handwritten and hung on street corners, was decreed by Julius Caesar in 59 BC and titled “Acta Diurna.”  The last news organization was born one second ago. And one second from now. There will be no end to them, and that is enough to make any journalist’s heart beat faster. I would not trade living in this era in this place for any other time in history.

And to The Foothill Dragon Press: welcome to a great big exciting fast connected world–it’s a nice time to be born.

(Photo Credit: “Yesterday News,” Creative Commons Licensed by Zarko Drincic on Flickr.com)