Tattler (student newspaper)

The Tattler's logo from the mid-1930s through the late 1960s.

The first issue of the Tattler was published on December 1, 1892. The paper concentrated on news for its first decade, but from about 1910 to 1930, it resembled a yearbook. During the Second World War, it was published weekly as a broadsheet and subscribed to the wire services.

There appears to have been a gap during the 1950s when the Tattler was not published. It returned by 1959 as a magazine-sized publication. It reported on the continuous upheavals in the administration (garnering administration hostility) until the early 1980s, switching to its current tabloid size during the early 70s. From 1984 to 1992, it was renamed the IHS Press.

The "Tattler" name was restored (with the volume numbering restarted) in 1992 and has been in continuous publication since then.

The Tattler has been at the center of a controversy regarding censorship that has attracted attention from both the local media and national experts on journalism law.

In 2004 and early 2005 The Tattler published a number of controversial articles, most notably several articles critical of the Ithaca High School administration and a restaurant review that some considered racist. In response, in January 2005 the Ithaca City School District issued a set of guidelines, declaring The Tattler a school-sponsored publication and giving its faculty adviser considerably greater power to edit or remove objectionable material.

A cartoon intended for the February 2005 issue included stick-figure depictions of sexual positions was removed by The Tattler's faculty advisor, Stephanie Vinch. The student editors refused to allow a "censored" version of the issue to be published, and appealed the decision to IHS principal Joe Wilson and ICSD superintendent Judith Pastel. Both Wilson and Pastel ultimately rejected the appeals, also finding the cartoon lewd and inappropriate for the student newspaper. Vinch soon resigned her position as faculty advisor, halting publication of The Tattler. Principal Wilson closed The Tattler office in the school.

Publication of The Tattler went underground, running out of editor-in-chief Rob Ochshorn's house. The student staff produced a complete underground March issue, which the high school administration denied permission to distribute on school grounds because it contained the same cartoon that was earlier deemed obscene. The editors also created underground issues for April and May, which did not contain the controversial cartoon, which the school allowed them to distribute on school grounds.

IHS mathematics and computer science teacher Roselyn Teukolsky was named interim faculty advisor for The Tattler and the student staff produced the June 2005 issue back on school grounds.

Later that month, the student editors sued the Ithaca City School District, Superintendent Pastel, Principal Wilson, and Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Bill Russell, alleging they violated the student editors’ First Amendment press rights by censoring the February issue cartoon, prohibiting campus distribution of the underground March issue, and imposing guidelines that required pre-publication approval by the faculty adviser. On March 23, 2009, the federal trial court ruled that the district could prohibit publication and campus distribution of the cartoon, but denied summary judgment regarding the guidelines, ruling that the issue would require a trial.

The students appealed the district court's decision. In R.O. v. Ithaca City School District,[3] 645 F.3d 533, 269 Ed. Law Rep. 464 (2nd Cir. 2011), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the school district's censorship of the cartoon and held that the editorial guidelines did not violate the First Amendment, relying on Supreme Court decisions in Bethel School District Number 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675, 683, 106 S.Ct. 3159, 92 L.Ed.2d 549 (1986) (First Amendment does not prevent school district from disciplining high school student for giving lewd speech at school assembly) and Hazelwood School District vs. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 108 S.Ct. 562, 98 L.Ed.2d 592 (1988) (schools may exercise editorial control over student speech in school-sponsored activities if "reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns").

The Supreme Court denied review.[4]

The school district revised the editorial guidelines in 2009 to mimic the language in Fraser and Hazelwood and the plaintiffs tried again to invalidate the new guidelines. In 2014, the federal district court dismissed the case as moot. R.O v. Ithaca City Sch. Dist., 5:05-CV-695 (NAM/ATB) (N.D.N.Y. Oct. 23, 2014).[5]

A similar situation occurred in the 1970s, with a student lawsuit against the District for censorship. The matter was settled out of court, but as part of the settlement the District made certain promises regarding the editorial independence of the paper in the future. At this time the details of the settlement are unavailable, but it is possible that the new guidelines violate this legal settlement.

• "IHS Student Editors Dispute Content Rules", by Anne Ju, The Ithaca Journal, 13 May 2005
• "The Tattlers: IHS Senior Editors Continue Fight for the First Amendment", The Ithaca Times, 22 June 2005
• “Editorial: 'Tattler' troubles: Students and school must respect freedom”, The Ithaca Journal, 22 June 2005
• “Schooled”, Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2005
• "Ithaca High 'Tattler' Case Goes to Federal Appeals Court", The Ithaca Journal, 10 February 2010

• Official website
• Alumni & Friends of the Tattler
• Wiki about the Tattler case