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Law, Ethics and News Literacy

Law

AB 551

As a journalist, knowing my rights is a big deal. Assembly Bill 551 started to take flight in Wisconsin in my sophomore year of high school. We would watch the news on it daily in one of my journalism classes. I always pay attention because I knew that this would directly affect me. I decided to go to one of the hearings they had in Madison, and I even took notes on the whole thing. I wanted the ability to write without concern of being censored. 

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The AB 551 Hearing in Madison.

Me watching the news about AB 551.

New Voices Wisconsin Instagram.

Copyright

Figuring out copyright laws and regulations can be very difficult. There are many little differences between things that are okay to use and things that are not okay to use. I came across this head on when working on my fall trends showstopper. I made a section based on sports rivalries because they were very prominant in Kenosha County this year between Wisconsin and Chicago teams. I wanted to use teams' logos on the spread, but there were many regulations on using logos. I had to do a deep dive from media kits to copywrite laws. I was able to find the logos in a way that I could use, as long as I didn't change anything about them and followed certain rules about layering other graphics with these logos. 

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Anti-ICE Walkout

A group of students had decided to initiate a walkout in response to ICE officials and their feelings against what had been going on in our community. It was the talk of the school in the days leading up, which meant is was a major topic of discussion in yearbook. We questioned whether or not we should cover it, not because of ethics, but because of the legal risks we'd be taking. We held a meeting and went over what we legally can and can't do, along with school policies. I learned a lot about where exactly I can stand/walk and what I can do. I, along with four other staff members, took a camera and went out. It was freezing, but completely worth it for the nearly 100 students that participated. It was the most exciting thing I have ever covered. In the moment of taking their pictures as everyone was walking by and flashing their posters, I have never been more sure that this is the kind of thing I want to be doing for the rest of my life.

Ethics

Election Spread

Ethics is always something to look for when publishing something, especially when covering something contriversial. Ethics became a huge theme when we decided to make a spread on the 2024 presidential election. For some time, we debated even doing it, in fear the school would cover it up. However, we decided to take the risk. This was a challenging task due to all the false news and bias that can come with it. We took careful steps to ensure everything was relevent, accuarate and both sides were represented equally. This included extra fact checking and many look overs by many pairs of eyes.

Summer Section

It's been a struggle getting summer coverage because our community tends to scatter. I brought it up at a meeting with my co-editor in chief and adviser. We came to the decision that summer means too much to too many people to not cover it. This would also help us get more coverage of peoples' personal lives. Because of all this, we decided to add a smaller summer section to our yearbook. The challenges came with finding what spreads were worth replacing for this section. We turned the underclassmen's personality profiles into only one page and there were a few events that were not happening that had in the past. The summer section was a success and has some of my favorite spreads.

Bowling

The Indian Trail bowling team is a club sport. Despite their recent successes, our yearbook has never covered them. This is because if we do, do we now have to cover all other club sports. We ultimately decided we should cover bowling for numerous reasons. They are the only club sport that wears jerseys representing our school. We had an open spread due to the loss of gymnasts from our school. And finally, if other club sports reached out to us, we would gain knowledge on things going on in our community that we could also cover on a case by case basis as determined by the editorial board.

Index

In my fall trends spread, I had a timeline of true crime events that have been happening. With names like Jeffery Epstien, we debated including the criminal and victim names in the Index. We also thought about how a student might feel if their name was right next to someone like that. We then thought about the uncertainty of anyone's situation, like if someone committed a crime out of self defense or was framed. This, along with traditional AP style of indexing everyone, led us to agree to put them in the index.

News Literacy

AP Style Writing

To ensure my writing is top tier journalism, I make sure to check anything I'm not sure of in the Associated Press Stylebook. We keep copies of this book in our classroom, so we always have access to them when we need them. This book has helped me numerous times, and I am still learning more. I strive to be the best writer I can be. This book helps me achieve this. I can't wait to grow even more.

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© 2025 by Kyra Balch. All rights reserved.
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