For the fifth and final day of Scholastic Journalism Week Friday, Feb. 27, the theme is Truth Against the Clock, which focuses on journalists’ responsibility to balance timeliness with accuracy.
The spread of misinformation, coupled with the increasing news-avoidance rates, has contributed to the people’s declining trust in journalists. According to the World Economic Forum, people are continuing to turn to social media instead of journalism for news information.
“Americans still want a free and trustworthy press — but the collapse of public media leaves fewer places to find it,” according to Bilal Baydoun with the Roosevelt Institute. “If trust in media is collapsing, then a revitalized public system is the strongest foundation on which to rebuild it.”
To ensure the press is a dependable source for the public, journalists consistently report on current events, staying relevant and timely. The Oracle ensures quick coverage by dividing the staff into news teams, each responsible for reporting the news for their week.
Part of the requirement for all first- and second-year Oracle staff members is writing two news briefs that require quick turnarounds: one published within 48 hours of an event and another published within a week. The first step of the editing process for an article is fact-checking, multimedia reporter Ally O’Boyle (’28) said.
“We find someone who is well informed on the topic which we’re reporting on and have them look over our article, check and make sure that everything is good to go before sending it to our section editor,” O’Boyle said, “which is super beneficial because I know myself, personally, [my] fact-checking buddy has caught some of the stuff that I’ve missed.”
O’Boyle said it is beneficial to have a partner catch mistakes that would likely delay the editing process later.
Editor-in-Chief of The Corral at Parkway Central High School in St. Louis, Missouri, Esther Wang (’26) said the relevance of time-sensitive stories is especially prevalent for print publications. Writers would pitch their stories three months in advance when The Corral was printed, Wang said, and they wrote articles that were not timely.
“The issue with that is obviously something wouldn’t be relevant by the time the paper came out,” Wang said. “We try to pick stories that would be timely when the paper comes out. Now, when we’re trying to move the issue online in recent years, we adopted a breaking news format.”
This is the first year The Corral implemented a breaking news section. As a public school with over 1,200 students, Wang said the newspaper program has 13 journalists on staff. She said this leads editors, such as herself, to take on more responsibilities. She said they are hoping to grow the breaking news section because she is currently the only staff member who reports on breaking news.
According to Pew Research, 9 in 10 U.S. adults encounter misinformation, but approximately half don’t know how to determine credible facts. In a voice recording sent to The Oracle, reporter for the UltraViolet at Marlborough, Abby Santa Maria (’29), said it is important not to sacrifice accuracy for speed.
“Trust is crucial for a newspaper. Sacrificing accuracy for urgency risks losing the audience’s trust,” Santa Maria said. “Social media has created an expectation for fast publishing, but it’s better to be correct than first.”
In the Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report, journalist Nic Newman wrote that the challenge for publications is to deliver accurate reporting while also working to regain the trust of the skeptical public. O’Boyle said providing factual reporting promptly is necessary for journalists as they are the ones people turn to for information.
“Journalists are truth tellers — we’re watchdogs,” O’Boyle said. “We are fierce, and we are waiting to tell accurate and truthful information to people who are looking to us as educators and as storytellers.”
Additional reporting by multimedia reporter Izzie Erickson (’28) and staff reporter Lila Stotland (’29).
