Reported by Brad Penner, STATEWIDE Correspondent

The school newspaper is not the same "rah-rah" publication it was when many of you went to school. Student journalists with many papers are taking on tough issues that confront teenagers these days. That's put some papers in a collision course with principals and school superintendents who think they should have the final say about what ends up in the school newspaper. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that kind of censorship has its place in schools. Lots of students and their teachers disagree. The Nebraska state legislature even considered a bill that would have protected the rights of student reporters. Every year the struggle to balance free speech with responsibility is reason to have second thoughts about the first amendment.

The rush is on to beat the deadline for the next issue of the Ralston High School Ram Pages. For a newspaper that's published by students during their lunch hour, the pleasure and pressures of journalism are all in evidence here.

"Right. 'cause then I can put it, like, down in a photo and I can rearrange this story to fit it better."
"Okay, Nicki, this is what I would like you to do ..."

The student publishers at Ralston High School share another fact of life with professional journalists -- their first amendment freedom of speech. The school district gives its students great leeway in what they're allowed to print in their paper.

[Nancy Rice, Newspaper Advisor:] "How are they going to learn to respect free speech unless they've been given a chance to practice it, especially in a school setting?"

The reporters of Ram Pages appreciate and value the level of trust given them by their advisors and administrators.

[Ram Editor:] "I mean, we are a real-world paper, if you think about it. We've got the same audience. We're in a smaller microcosm maybe. But I think we deal with issues that are maybe even more laden with responsibility than some of the issues that are covered in commercial papers that are bought and sold on newsstands."

[Steve Shanahan, Blair HS Principal:] "It's probably the same constitution for everybody, you know. I think there's a lot of cases that don't stop at the school house door."

But the amount of first amendment leeway allowed by principal Steve Shanahan is much different than the rules in Ralston. His approach is probably also more common in Nebraska high schools. Becky Huff is the editor of "Bear Paws," the newspaper of Blair High School.

[Becky Huff, Editor:] "If it's anything that they are worried about, we take it into Mr. Shanahan or Mr. Grepp and they want to read through it and they want to make sure that they've been quoted in the right way. Even though you interview them, they kind of like to read the finished draft before it goes in the paper."

Bob Bair, the newspaper advisor here, is considered one of the best journalism teachers in the state. His support of a student's right of free speech is conditional.

[Bob Bair]: "I think they should have the right, but I'm not sure they can handle the right. And that is a contradiction. But a lot of times they don't have the maturity, at this age, to know what is in good taste and what is not."

And perhaps to underscore his point, the issue that most upset his student journalists this year got down to the use of a single word.

[Becky Huff:] "We couldn't write 'butt' in the paper so we had a problem with that. We wanted to write a thing about why you couldn't wear Beavis and Butthead t-shirts but we couldn't say the word 'Butthead.' So we had to say Beavis and his friend. It was -- oh, everyone was mad about that."

[Principal Shanahan:] "I think the Beavis and Butthead issue, I think, was a question of probably taste and appropriateness in a school setting, in a classroom setting. Would it cause more of a distraction than it -- for a lack of a better word, maybe was worth?"

"Butthead" never made it in the paper rightly or wrongly, because Principal Shanahan periodically is given the choice to review news and editorial content and strike what he thinks might be inappropriate.

[Shanahan:] "Things that would cause friction, that would cause ill feelings between the groups aren't present. Those things are warded off before we get there so that we're always kind of moving ahead in a positive vein."

[Bair:] "Mr. Shanahan has never asked to see anything before we go to print, but it's always been my policy that if there is anything that can be an embarrassment to the school or that could cause some problems that i run it past him first just to at least make him aware. That way at least there are no surprises for him."

There is little outspoken opposition to the school's policy. Bob Bair points out this is a conservative community and matters of good taste are taken seriously. The students seem to accept that. The editor and advisor add without apology that this student newspaper is largely a forum for entertainment not hard-hitting news. The advisor claims it's what readers want. The editor says that's true but it's also the knowledge that any serious reporting gets close and critical scrutiny from the administration.

[Becky:]"You kind of get used to our administration. You know what they expect."

[Bill Kelly:] "So you kind of censor yourselves sometimes?"

[Becky:] "Yeah. Mr. Bair kind of even will say we should steer away from that before we even really try to go into it because we know how our administration will react. They're pretty easy to read."

[Matt Waite:] "Whenever we had these discussions about these incidents, I always respected his opinion, his decision. I understood where he was coming from. I didn't like it. You know, I bit my lip and said, 'Okay, I understand.'"

Matt didn't understand when he was told to stop working on a story about some Blair High School students who liked to pass themselves off as gang members in dress and attitude. Matt heard accusations that Blair Police were starting to shake down Blair students without much cause.

[Matt:] "Some kids had got in a fight. There had been some arrests. That's public record. There had been some people injured. Some police had started doing field interrogations. We have this evidence here. This is all public record, all public knowledge. We can go with that. That's protected under the first amendment."

But principal Shanahan put a stop to the story.

[Shanahan:] "We were advised by local law enforcement that that would not be a good thing to do given kind of the tenor of the situation in the community so we respected that. And I think that's good communication between people."

[Bill Kelly:] "And still a good call on your part?"

[Shanahan:] "I think I would do the same, yeah. I think I would do the same."

[Matt Waite:] "For the police to ask them to not publish the story and for them to just go, 'Okay,' that's irresponsible."

Matt Waite did not know until we told him of our conversation with principal Shanahan that the reason his story had been killed was because the local police had asked that it not be written.

[Matt:] "People have the right to know, especially with a public institution like the police. I mean, the more closed off something is, the worse things happen."

[Marissa Lingen, News Editor:] "We try and inform the student body in things that some people don't want them to be informed on, such as the machete incident we had last fall."

The machete story -- when a large knife and some marijuana were found in a car in a student parking lot -- was often referred to here as an example of learning important lessons while reporting important stories.

[Marissa:] "It's a controversial issue so most people would agree that it needs to be covered in the student paper. However, the student involved, even though he was expelled, had a sister who was still at Ralston, and so some people felt that I should have just left the topic completely alone because his sister might have been embarrassed by it."

Almost every issue of the Ralston paper features some hard news -- stories about guns in school, an anti-abortion after school club formed by a teacher, the machete issue, and extensive coverage of a major change in how the school day is structured. Coverage of that issue displeased many on the faculty.

[Steve Watkins, Page Design Editor:] "A lot of information was withheld from students -- that was given just to teachers, and we try to give that information back to the students so they could understand what was happening to them."

But faculty, who overwhelmingly favored a change in the two-hour double block of classroom time, were displeased at coverage they saw as unfairly weighted towards student opinion against the change.

[Bill Kelly:] "Did you hear back from anybody about your coverage?"

[Student:] "I haven't heard anything, no. Mrs. Rice, have you heard anything?"

[Nancy Rice, Newspaper Advisor:] "Yes. I think people are more inclined to talk to me -- talk to the advisor more than they are the student. I'm the buffer and the go-between."

Among those Nancy Rice heard from -- Ralston High's principal, Robert Meyers.

[Dr. Robert Meyers, Ralston HS Principal:] "You know, I was concerned with some of the coverage because I felt like we had pretty much of one side and not of the other."

But principal Meyers does not, and he says he does not intend to ask for, the chance to review the paper's editorial content prior to publication.

[Meyers:] "Part of that learning process is that kids have to learn how to make decisions, they have to learn how to make the choices of what goes in the story or what they leave out of the story and all of those editing kinds of issues, and then they have to be able to respond to the questions."

And respond to criticisms. Last semester an editorial written by the paper's staff was riddled with factual errors. The student writers took the heat.

[Adam Klinker, Editorial Editor:] "You learn a lot of responsibility for your actions. If you write something that people don't like and you might have had a little misinformation, I mean some people might let it slide. Other people might jump all over you."

[Nancy Rice:] "These kids know that we're responsible for what we print. And we do make mistakes because really what we're doing is we're publishing our homework here. We really are. And we're only high school kids who have to be responsible but we learn from our mistakes."

Even the Ralston School Board took note of the coverage and what they interpreted as opposition to the change of schedule. The board voted not to make the changes favored by the faculty. While the school board president gave strong support to student freedom of speech, even she was unaware of just how much freedom Ralston students were given.

[Peggy Carrell, President Ralston School Board:] "I think this community is open enough and trusting enough that we respect them to just go with their own way, and it's proved by a teacher or staff. And I'm sure before it goes to print, the administration and the principal there at the building have looked at it."

[Bill Kelly:] "No, they don't."

[Peggy:] "Oh, interesting. Well, that's how much more faith we have in the system."

[Bill:] "You weren't even aware of that?"

[Peggy:] No... Don't..."

[Bill:] "Does that bother you a little bit?"

[Peggy:] "Mmm, maybe a little, just a little because I thought there would be a process more, so evidently Nancy must be the final stop which puts a lot of trust in her."

[Bill:] "And in the kids."

[Peggy:] "Very much so."

And that's largely the center of the debate -- trust, responsibility, respect for authority versus questioning the status quo. Somewhere in the middle of it all, for students it's a very real lesson about the shades of gray and a First Amendment that was written in black and white.

For STATEWIDE, I'm Bill Kelly.