Tuesday, January 28, 2014

New course to teach Joplin High School students how to "control the message"

Over the past few months, I have noted numerous times that one reason the C. J. Huff Administration has been able to continue full steam ahead despite some lapses that would have derailed even more competent leadership has been its success at controlling the message.

This has been done in three ways:

1. It has co-opted the local media, especially the Joplin Globe.

2. It has set up its own communication system through the district website, Facebook and Twitter, Jet 14, and carefully orchestrated

3. It controls access to the Board of Education.

Now, the Huff Administration is giving back to the community, by creating a class which will teach Joplin High School students how they, too, can control the message.

The class, which is on a long list of classes to be approved by the R-8 Board of Education when it meets tonight is titled Reputation Management and is described as follows:

This course addressed the ethical responsibilities of multimedia journalists as they apply to story development, audience reaction, story evolution and personal and organizational message control. Students will learn how consumers absorb, act, and react upon news based on media format and content emphasized in that format. The course also provides an overview of the media industry landscape, examining how the different players interact and how they balance being news gatherers and content producers for the purpose of generating revenue from the content.

Organizational message control, generating revenue, content producers- it would be nice to see something about truth and accuracy in the description.

Of course, those are the first things that are sacrificed when the goal is organizational message control.

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