This manual encompasses the policies and procedures for the operations of the Student Media at Richland College. The names of the publications are the Richland Chronicle and the decoy. Each publication publishes both a print edition and an on-line edition. The name of the radio station is KDUX Web Radio. Any questions about this policy manual should be directed to the faculty adviser.
The purposes of student media are as follows:
To provide instruction in the discipline of journalism and to emphasize the professional as well as the academic approach toward principles, rights and obligations of a free press in a free society: All media outlets are designed to function as closely as possible to real world media, to include the business and advertising components of publishing, and serve as a laboratory for the teaching and development of the skills of journalism.
To provide the college with a quality print and on-line newspaper, magazine and radio station: Good studentmedia reports, interprets and comments upon those events and ideas that it deems significant or that are of interest to its readers. Student media must be concerned with its publics: the student body, the administration and the faculty, and the community in hich it operates.
Meeting the needs of its publics should be the basic aim of the student-produced newspaper. This should be fundamental in the exercise of editorial judgment, in news play, content selection and editorial policy. Readers should receive a newspaper that provides accurate coverage of campus life and exhibits sound judgment and reasoning in columns and editorials. Readers deserve media that leads, informs, instructs and entertains, with truth, fairness and accuracy foremost in the production of that newspaper.
Student media reserves the right to criticize, to question and to evaluate, and assumes responsibility for accuracy and completeness of all criticism. Constructive criticism thoughtfully prepared and respectfully presented is basic to freedom of the college press.
Student media realizes that the exercise of freedom entails a heavy burden of responsibility. That responsibility must include not only the right to print or broadcast, but also the right not to print or broadcast, for student media realizes that, at least in part, the reputation of the students, the institution and the faculty can be shaped by student media.
Student media staff may make mistakes, but not without benefiting from those mistakes and full realization that it is responsible for those mistakes.
