Do you remember school fund raise drives? Perhaps you recall being a child having to sell boxes of chocolate, or maybe you recently ran into a young fund raiser outside the supermarket with candy for his band or choir. Then again you might even have the halfway-depleted box your son or daughter couldn't sell last week. I remember being saved from fund raiser hell on more than one occasion, and I know for a fact that I'm not the only one. In a twist on this common theme, a high school journalism class at Naples High School has been tasked to sell advertising in their school's yearbook and their grade depends on it.
According to
NBC2, the students must sell $600 in ads to receive an A, $500 for a B, $400 for a C, $300 for a D, and students who are unable to sell at least $300 in advertising for the school yearbook will receive an F. While it's certainly true that advertising is an essential component for almost any news organization, it is typically not the role of journalists to solicit these dollars. In fact, there is usually a wall between the advertising staff and the news staff to prevent conflicts of interest when an advertiser ends up in the news.
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