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By: Ingrid Hu Dahl
Published: August 15, 2008
Category: Letter from the Editor
Letter from the Editors
Welcome to Youth Media Reporter's first Academic Peer and Practitioner Reviewed Issue. The articles in Volume 2: Issue 4 focus on new research in youth media from a community of reflective learners.
This issue marks a significant milestone in the field of youth media, uniting academics and practitioners to discuss and craft research in the field. These seven articles represent the hard work of 11 academics, 10 peer reviewers, and two editors (Joellen Fisherkeller was the lead academic for this issue) that worked tirelessly since February 2008 to identify new models in scholarly research that values the incorporation of practitioner and academic dialogue and reflection.
This issue of YMR is unlike most peer reviewed journals. Our new model for a more engaging and community-bridging review process includes:
1. Pairing contributors to review each other's work (written and via teleconference)
2. Providing each contributor with at least two practitioners and/or academic reviewers
3. Presenting warm and cool feedback (a strategy Steven Goodman at Educational Video Center uses when talking with youth about their media products and learning processes)
4. Creating a feedback survey to assess and improve this model for next year's cohort
YMR aims to support academics that value youth media as they seek to publish work in publications (for tenure promotion). Many thanks go out to the contributors that made this issue possible and especially to our reviewers:
Tom Bailey, Community TV Network; Timothy Dorsey, Youth Media Learning Network; Meghan McDermott, Global Action Project; Padmini Narumanchi, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking; Kirthi Nath, Bay Area Video Coalition; Rebecca O'Doherty, Appalshop; Katina Paron, Children's Pressline; Lisa Tripp, Florida State University; and Kathleen Tyner, University of Texas-Austin.
The conversations that spurred between both groups in this process was engaging and valuable between two "worlds" that are not always easy to traverse. Through this process, we see that the split between teachers/practitioners and academics dismiss the many commonalities the two share; not always seeing from a more macro, bigger picture, needing to respond to the demands of institutions/organizations, feeling isolated and/or lacking sufficient reflection/dialogue with colleagues, and wanting to cross-dialogue beyond “one’s own backyard.”
Publishing in YMR is a challenge for academics to write for a more outward and practicing audience—our readers require concrete and relatable information and practical research for future funding and praxis. Through this process, both academics and practitioners learn from the intellectual power of the everyday praxis of youth media.
As readers and stewards of the field, we support the scholarship of these seven pieces that collectively represent how we might dig deep, broad, and long-term in this important, thriving field. We hope our model acts as an active sounding board for future bridges between research and practice-based worlds.
Your stewards in the field,
Ingrid Hu Dahl, Editor, YMR and Joellen Fisherkeller, Ph.D., NYU (acting leader of this Academic issue)
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