NSPC 2019 to be held in Lingayen, Pangasinan – DepEd

By Merlina Hernando-Malipot

The Department of Education (DepEd) has announced the conduct of the 2019
National Schools Press Conference (NSPC) to provide anew a venue for students
where they can enhance their skills in different journalistic endeavors and
approaches.

Undersecretary Atty. Nepomuceno Malaluan, in DepEd Memorandum No. 167

series of 2018, announced that the 2019 NSPC is scheduled from January 28 to
February 1. It will be held in Lingayen, Pangasinan with Region 1 as host region
and the Pangasinan 1 as the host schools division.

Anchored on the theme, “Fostering 21st Century Skills and Character-based

Education through Campus Journalism,” the 2019 NSPC aims to “demonstrate
understanding of the importance of Journalism by expressing it through different
journalistic endeavors and approaches.”

The conference, as Malaluan explained in the memo, also aims to “sustain

advocacy on social consciousness and environmental awareness” and to
“provide a venue for enriching learning experience for students interested in
Journalism as a career or those who intend to use skills sets learned through
campus journalism to give them better edge in their chosen careers.”

The 2019 NSPC, Malaluan added, also aims to “promote responsible journalism
and fair and ethical use of social media” as well as to “enhance journalistic
competence through healthy and friendly competitions.”

The NSPC consists of individual and group contests, school paper contests as well
as concurrent sessions with workshops. The individual contests include news
writing, features writing, editorial writing, sports writing, copyreading and headline
writing, science and technology writing, photojournalism, editorial cartooning,
and column writing (for exhibition only).
School paper contests will cover the news section, features section, editorial
section, science and technology section, sports section and layout and page
design. Meanwhile, the group contests are radio script writing and broadcasting
contests, collaborative desktop publishing (CPD) contest, online publishing
contest (for secondary level), and TV script writing and broadcasting contests (for
secondary level).

The NSPC is pursuant to Republic Act No. 7079 or the Campus Journalism Act of
1991. Recognizing and respecting intellectual property rights, DepEd said it
adheres to the rule concerning plagiarism. DepEd also reiterates its “stand to
disqualify school papers found to have copied and published texts, graphics and
other materials without duly acknowledging their sources.” DepEd added that
“any form of plagiarism in all competitions as proven by the board of judges shall
be ground for disqualification.”

21st Century skills are 12 abilities that today’s students need to succeed in their
careers during the Information Age.

21st Century skills are:

Critical thinking
Creativity
Collaboration
Communication
Information literacy
Media literacy
Technology literacy
Flexibility
Leadership
Initiative
Productivity
Social skills

These skills are intended to help students keep up with the lightning-pace of
today’s modern markets. Each skill is unique in how it helps students, but they all
have one quality in common.

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 Lacson: Character-based campus journalism
MICHELLE CATAP LACSON
THE Regional Schools Press Conference was held on November 20 to 21 in Malolos
City, Bulacan. This year’s theme, “Fostering 21st Century Skills and Character-
Based Education through Campus Journalism,” is indeed very timely and relevant.

In today’s era of digital media where we mold our young ones to develop 21st
century skills, it is also our parallel aspiration to inculcate values to our young
campus journalists especially on the field of journalism.
Media, or the press, is considered the fourth estate, and being such, it serves as
the watchdog of the government, informing people of the relevant events that
happen in the community, in the nation, and even around the world.

From the traditional mode of reportage which is the newspaper, we saw the
transformation of media with the invention of the radio, and also the television.
People who write the news, do commentaries over the radio, and those who
broadcast the stories on the television are limited to the journalists; the experts
who spent their time studying the field, mastering the techniques and even the
proper values that a journalist must possess, thus we have the Philippine
Journalist’s Code of Ethics of 1988.

However, as technology continuously encompasses our world, we also now have

the fourth type of media through the Internet, the social media. Nowadays, we
don’t have to wait for the next day to read the newspaper, listen to the radio, or
watch the news over the television to know the headlines and current goings-on
in and out of the country. With just a click, information is available and can be
shared instantly.

While we see the many advantages of the new technologies that we seem to
cannot live without nowadays, name it, we cannot avoid Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, and other social networking sites, we have to clearly see as well the
disadvantages of this in our lives. We all know about the phenomenon called
“fake all news” and it is saddening to know how this have become widespread.

It certainly has caused a lot of negative impacts in the field of journalism since an
ordinary person, who has a camera phone, can instantly capture an incident,
post it on the social media site, and become a source of information that can be
shared all over the world. Journalism is no longer limited to the reporters, anchors,
information officers, and media experts. Anyone now can produce news
anytime, anywhere.
This is where our values and character must come in. The first clause in the
Journalist’s Code of Ethics says: “I shall scrupulously report and interpret the news,
taking care not to suppress essential facts nor to distort the truth by omission or
improper emphasis. I recognize the duty to air the other side and to correct
substantive errors promptly.”

We have to clearly see the boundary between being a journalist to being a simple
blogger or content developer on the social media. To quote an article about fake
news, “Journalists are the guardians of veritas, lest they become ‘bloggers’ or
‘vloggers’.”

“Journalism is a professional discipline and as with every discipline it requires

knowledge, training; it involves methodology, procedures in order to ascertain
the facts and report on them accordingly. Journalism is a calling from which few
are chosen.”

Let this be my challenge to young budding campus journalists. You already hold
in your hands the power to inform, the power to speak the truth for the common
good of our people. Use this power wisely, truthfully, and honorably. You are the
hope of this nation, and you hold the key to a brighter, liberating future.

Character education is an umbrella term loosely used to describe the teaching of children in a
manner that will help them develop variously as moral, civic, good, mannered, behaved, non-
bullying, healthy, critical, successful, traditional, compliant or socially acceptable beings.