Is writing about something tantamount to glorifying it? The answer to that question, I have found, often depends on how you feel about the issue before the first word is written.
Consider the discussion over the past couple of weeks as staff writer Bill Hendrick has been following the flight of hundreds of metro Atlanta’s high school graduates on what amounts to a valedictory tour of fun in the sun and booze in the clubs, hotels and lounges of Cancun, Mexico.
By writing about what is becoming an annual rite of passage for graduates who have the ability to put together $700 to $1,000 for the trip, the newspaper received a flurry of letters and calls from readers complaining we had chosen to endorse the behavior.
Many of you said it was incomprehensible that parents of these teens would allow them to go off without adult supervision into a world where sex and alcohol were so plentiful. The Constitution’s editorial staff even decided to weigh in on the subject, calling it inappropropriate.
Venters made fun of the parents and called their children spoiled brats. Other readers said the newspaper should pay these students and their affluent families less attention.
But the annual graduation trip to Cancun has become big business, attracting over the last week or so, according to Hendrick’s research, more than 1,000 students from throughout metro Atlanta. They are lured there by tour agents who promise them a week of fun as a reward for the hard work of making it through high school.
And for every graduate who gets to go, there’s probably five to 10 times as many who went to their parents begging to let them make the trip, only to be told there’s no way in hell that was going to happen.
For better or worse, the discussion of whether to let an 18-year-old son or daughter go unchaperoned to Cancun for graduation or Panama City for spring break has joined the list of tough conversations parents must have about setting boundaries. It’s a natural progression of those teen-years discussions.
Should they get a car? What restrictions should we impose about using the car? And those are the easy ones. The discussions get tougher as they reach that peculiar age when they are old enough to vote and go to war but not old enough to buy a drink. Is it better to provide a safe place for their expected behavior or simply forbid it?
Reflecting such real-life, family issues in the newspaper seems a good thing to do.
Just as important, many of us who have faced the Graduation Trip decision have wondered what actually happens while the kids are down there. Hendrick and his editors decided that describing what happens at night and in the wee hours of the morning on the beaches and in the clubs would provide a better perspective on the issue and help parents facing the decision in the future.
As Hendrick said in an essay that accompanied the last installment of the Cancun adventure on Wednesday, he had a personal stake in the story. His son, Stuart, a May graduate of Walton High School in Cobb County, was making the trip, along with about three dozen of his friends and fellow graduates.
Did Hendrick’s personal role in the story taint his reporting by making the parents who chose to let their children go on the trip (as he obviously did) look sympathetic? Did his reporting from the scene glorify the teens’ behavior? Did he pull any punches?
I think not. Though it would have been better to let readers know earlier in the coverage that Hendrick had a son going on the trip, sending a reporter who also happens to be a parent to cover the story was probably smart.
You can tune in MTV anytime from around Valentine’s Day through Memorial Day to see booty dancing and drinking on the sun-drenched beaches of Florida and Mexico. The images the TV provides of spring break and graduation parties are aimed directly at teens who soak them up like tanning lotion.
Parents, on the other hand, rarely get a firsthand account from their own perspective of what goes on. And that’s what Hendrick provided. His words and descriptions didn’t blanch about the booze and the latent sexuality that underpinned the trip. Parents aren’t likely to find that kind of information in marketing brochures from the tour agents.
