Albert Lea Tribune

News broke this week of a high school newspaper in Arkansas that was suspended after they wrote and published an investigative report on several football players transferring suspiciously under the guise of academic transfers.

The high school and its community are small and the article caused quite an uproar. The school administration promptly stopped the newspaper from publishing and threatened to fire the faculty adviser to the newspaper.

It took these young journalists a month to investigate this story, an ambitious start to young careers. Now their work on this piece and their work on their student newspaper are being ripped away from them.

Students like the high school journalists in this story should be commended for their work by their administration and by their community. They uncovered shady practices by the high schools in the area, which was their job as reporters. School newspapers are important for training young journalists before they enter the job market. It’s important to allow these student journalists to do more work than reviewing plays and talking about the science curriculum.

Journalism often means printing stories that people will not like. Stories that are important serious, and don’t necessarily make everyone feel fuzzy inside.

As a nation, we need to start treating student journalists the same way we treat adult journalists. Their work is equally important and should be treated as such. The First Amendment must protect all journalists.