Field trip a success

So, 11-brave high school students from Mrs. Pankratz’s creative writing class made their trip to the offices of the PCN last Friday, and boy, were they ever captivated! (And by “captivated” I mean we didn’t bore them to tears or put them to sleep.)

The event started with introductions of the PCN staff and from there we talked about writing a news story lead, the 5 W’s (who, what, when, where and why...and sometimes, who cares?) as well as the always important Ctl+S feature that saves any document one might be working on in any computer program worth its salt. (Open Apple + S for you Mac users.)

The students also broke into pairs and spent 10-minutes interviewing each other. With any luck, the 35-word stories they wrote -- on a tight deadline -- will be ran in these newspaper pages sometime soon.

With all that complete, the field trip looked as though it would last a whopping 20-minutes. This newspaper’s editor might be Jim Dandy when it comes to writing stories and taking pictures, but when it came to drawing up a lesson plan, he fell short (like nine yards away from a first down, if you will.)

But not to fret. These students came armed with questions and open minds when it came to the subject of journalism.

One of the more interesting questions had to do with freedom of speech and freedom of the press. I tried to explain that sure, both of those things are guaranteed by law (in most cases.) What I also tried to convey -- though I am not sure I hit the mark -- was that though you are free to write or say anything you feel necessary that there are also consequences to cashing in those freedoms.

There have been plenty of instances in mainstream media and pop culture on this subject recently. The two that immediately come to mind are Phil Robertson from A&E’s popular show Duck Dynasty and rapper Kayne West. Now it doesn’t matter what you think of the opinions of these two headline grabbers. Agree or disagree, both are guaranteed the right to voice their thoughts on anything they want...and both of them do.

What I don’t think some of their fans understand is that just because one is free to air their thoughts doesn’t mean that they won’t find trouble as a result (Phil got suspended from DD and Kayne, well, he is getting boycotted by musicians across the country.)

I hope that my talk about freedom of speech doesn’t inhibit any of the these students from going out into the world and fighting for what they think is right. The other side of that is sometimes you need to muffle your voice in order to continue to receive paychecks. Freedom of speech is wonderful. Being able to pay your mortgage is also pretty sweet.

Thanks for reading and aloha.