Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp sees a distraction. Georgia’s student media staff sees a deadline. While the state’s newest push to ban phones from high schools as an attempt to reclaim classrooms, it could end up hurting the staffs that rely on instant uploads and mobile interviews. This legislation not only stops notifications, but threatens journalism, making it harder to collect news on the spot.
“I think [this law] will absolutely make journalism harder,” Siddarth Suresh said. Suresh is a senior at Innovation Academy and the Editor-in-Chief of The Beacon, the school’s student newspaper. Suresh is also a Georgia Scholastic Press Association ambassador and a PBS News Student Reporting Labs advisory member.
“Journalism has always evolved alongside technology, and in our increasingly digital world, student journalism has become digital too. Phones are often the easiest way to record interviews, capture photos and document events quickly,” Suresh said.
Many student journalists already rely heavily on their phones for everyday reporting tasks needed when writing a story.
“I mainly utilize my phone for interviews and transcriptions. When I have sources that are not a part of the Midtown community, I primarily rely on phone call interviews. If I am reporting after school or before school I use the voice memos or Otter.ai app to record my interviews,” Lerner said.
From the expansion of the Distraction-Free Education Act, the restrictions that are soon to be placed upon phones may endanger the reputation of schools across Georgia.
Without the ability to pull out a device and record a breaking story or championship celebration, the student press can no longer easily do their job. For a generation that lives and works in the digital world, being forced to “go dark” is an extreme setback.
“Speaking from personal experience, the phone ban at my school has made it difficult to report during school hours,” Lerner said. “Without our phones or personal computers, I haven’t been able to contact sources throughout the school day or use my phone to record.”
“I think it’s really controversial right now because it’s not fully set in stone yet, but if it does go into effect, it would impact everyone in the school – even teachers since they’d have to enforce it,” Ryan Levan, a senior staffer on the Trail, said. “Honestly I don’t think it’s going to change much. Schools try to enforce phone rules at the beginning of the year, but after a while, most teachers stop caring. I feel like this would end up the same way.”
This goes beyond just missing photos; the redefines what it means to document a school year. The power of a modern student press lies in its candid moments. Without the ability to record a loss, or get an interview for a story the moment it breaks, McIntosh, as well as other schools face nothing to report.
While student journalism existed before smartphones, today’s reporters rely heavily on them for speed, and efficiency. Which means this is yet to be a major shift.
“Phones are used for a large part of how we gather and record information,” said Nyla Kerr. “There are other ways to do it—we’re just going to have to go back to the old-school way—but people have grown so accustomed to using phones because they make things a lot easier.”
By stripping away the primary tool for documentation, a narrative block is created because of the limitations. If student journalists are forced to wait until the end of the school day to finish a deadline, they aren’t able to report on the present, but rather chase the past.
“I think it’s definitely going to be hard, because we’re not going to be able to see emails as soon as they come out–we’re going to have to wait on our Chromebook,” said Grace Lovejoy. “Posting on social media is going to be really hard too, because we’ll have to wait for our advisor to do it.
Without instant notifications and access, student media staff may struggle to keep up with fast-moving events, delaying both coverage and communication.
“Student journalists often cover events as they happen. If they prioritize complete accuracy, speed could suffer because it takes longer to transfer recordings or files from other devices. On the other hand, if they prioritize speed, accuracy might decline because students could end up summarizing interviews from memory instead of carefully reviewing recordings,” Suresh said.
