Fake news, AI slop, misinformation. In recent years, news has been plagued by untrustworthy content and articles. In a time with so much uncertainty, why should readers trust the Mountain Echo to provide reliable information?
The Mountain Echo staff consists of 24 students; seven seniors, five juniors, eleven sophomores and one freshman. Every student is held accountable for utilizing the skills they learned in introductory classes to make sure their articles are up to the standard set by the publication’s editors and adviser Wanda Vanish.
“All students who report for the Mountain Echo undergo extensive training in an introduction course and then have continued education as they work on the publication,” Vanish said. “Some professional journalism sources are considered biased and I want the Mountain Echo journalists to be able to recognize bias and acknowledge their own to be sure our publication holds true to the Society of Professional Journalists standards. AI is a current topic and issue in education, but for the reporters on staff they must do the leg work to get first person sources and that is something AI simply cannot do. In order to write about this school right now the journalists must put out original reporting.”
Reporters begin by identifying a story or topic that is both relevant and of interest to the student body. These stories can range from news, features, sports or opinions, but it is always a priority to make sure there is a balanced mix of articles.
The process of pitching, writing and editing an article takes roughly two weeks, and reporters are expected to publish about two articles each month.
“The first thing I do is a little bit of research that I get online about whatever I’m writing about,” senior reporter Melissa Krainer said. “Then I come up with questions, and then I email the people that I want to interview and set up an interview with them. Once I have all of that information and quotes from them, I start writing.”
The Mountain Echo has three editors who are responsible for reviewing articles before they are published. No article is published until it has been read over and revised by at least two editors.
“I do my best to trust my staff because I’m not the first person to look through it,” Editor-in-Chief Madison Aboud said. “You have our two associates [Emmalee Martyak and Mattie Baker], who are wonderful, and they are on top of things… they’ll come to me if they have an issue and they’ll say, ‘Hey, this is looking fishy. What do you think we should do?’ And Mrs. Vanish also goes through a lot of the stories as well, which is so helpful because she can catch things that maybe I wouldn’t catch.”
Even with the editing process, human error can still occur. Whether it be accidental bias, inaccurate information, unusable quotes or simply typos, mistakes do happen. If the Mountain Echo staff are made aware of a faulty article that had been published, immediate protocol is to either correct the error or take down the article in its entirety.
“The only [mistake] that I know of was we had a story this year… there was someone [quoted] that is not able to be on the website, so we quickly took the story down to make sure we didn’t cause any legal issues for them or for us,” Aboud said.
As the Mountain Echo continues to publish new content every day, the staff hopes to continue providing a trustworthy news outlet for students.
“I think we are a trustworthy publication, and the reason I say that is because I have made sure in my four years on staff that everything I do is fact checked, and that I’m telling the right story and I’m telling the right things, and I hope that I pass that on to my staff as well,” Aboud said. “They are a truly killer staff, and I know that I push them, and I know when I push them they get it done and they do it properly.”
