University journalism departments across the country are getting involved with a new trend: teaching news literacy as an elective, seminars and/or mandatory courses for all incoming students. Most young people aren’t familiar with the phrase, but what is becoming familiar is an adult journalist visiting their high school classroom asking where they get their news.
It seems that news literacy training is creeping into the lives of the youth with whom we—as youth media educators—work but is there a place for it in youth media programming? What is news literacy and what does it bring to the youth media field?
In its essence, news literacy is an initiative to:
• educate people to distinguish legitimate news sources from propaganda and sensationalism; and,
• engage people in the conversation about the role of a free press in a democracy.
I have been working in youth media, mostly in a print setting, for 15 years and I know how passionate and effective we are in getting young people to actively create and contribute to media (1).
Cross-Over Benefits: News Literacy and Youth Media
Currently most of my youth media work takes place in New York City public high schools where I freelance as the newspaper adviser for two high schools. I also co-direct the NYC High School Journalism Collaborative, an initiative at Baruch College, to provide support, training and opportunities for high school newspaper teachers and students. Because my work focuses on journalism skills training, I am by default teaching news literacy, which leaves me uniquely positioned to see the crossover benefits.
What I see in schools is that there is so much “information” easily available and students do not have the skills to sort through it. As a result, students search on Google but do not know how to sort through the 14-pages of links that result.
Think about how you researched papers or looked up information when you were in high school. For example, I remember filling out my financial aid form for college as a teen and one of the questions was: “How many people live in your community?” I had no idea nor did my mother. It was 9 p.m. on a weeknight, the library was closed and the form had to be post-marked the next day. I made up a number that was probably ridiculously low. I remember feeling completely isolated from information about my community.
Fast forward to the present and students can easily bring up Census.gov and find that Shelby Township, Mich. had a population of 65,159 in 2000. But, if they landed a Google search on www.americantowns.com, they would find that my hometown has only 3,951 residents; another search, to www.zipareacode.net puts the figure at 69,812–which is 4,653 more than the Census. Which one is right?
News literacy helps students understand that the question really is, “Which source is most legitimate?” The personal example I use has real world implications. There is so much information that is readily available that it is hard to know what to trust. For student journalists, this as part of their training; they learn how to research, identify legitimate sources of information, consult independent experts and provide context. In the youth media context, news literacy practices provide a framework for due diligence in our teaching.
For example, years ago I was working with a group of young people on a story about homelessness. Homes for the Homeless stated on its website that the average age of a homeless person was 9 years old—a powerful statistic for a youth media piece that wants to grab adults’ attention. But, as a youth media educator, I wouldn’t let the youth reporters use it until they got the whole story from the nonprofit. The students called the NGO and after several hand-offs were eventually told how that statistic was determined. They decided it was legitimate research and so the statistic went into the article. It did not change the outcome, but the students learned when and how to question information presented as fact and to take ownership over the material found in their work. Youth media practitioners must encourage students to identify “real” news and information.
“The process of making media is a window into news literacy,” said Janet Liao, a journalism program officer at McCormick Foundation (2). When we teach young people how to make media, we have the perfect opportunity to teach them how to do it well, because in the process of making media young people run into the problem of finding reliable material for their productions. This process provides a space to talk about the necessity for using the stringent standards of knowledge production that are the foundation of professional media work.
And in the eyes of John Nichols and Robert McChesney, who are spearheading a media reform movement (www.freepress.net), the opportunity to train young people about good journalism is also chance to save democracy. “What should be done about the disconnect between young people and journalism?” asked Nichols and McChesney in The Nation. “We need to get young people accustomed to producing journalism and to appreciating what differentiates good journalism from the other stuff”(3). Even outside the youth media field, professionals are drawing a connection between youth creating media and understanding the importance of a high quality, independent press. If those outside the youth media field can see it, we should too.
Youth Media as Citizen Journalism
As youth media practitioners, if we teach young people that every news article or blog entry they comment on and every Facebook post or tweet they write is a permanent part of the information landscape on the web, then we are taking part in journalism and news literacy practices. We just do not make that distinction enough, nor, do we typically compare the work done in youth media to the practices of investigative journalism.
Professor Geanne Rosenberg (4) at Baruch College sees news literacy as an essential part of primary education because so many young people are active as citizen journalists, whether they know it or not. She explains, “There’s an increasing role for the public to contribute to news gathering. If we can teach our students how to contribute high quality, factual information, that is good for students and for society.” Rosenberg, who is the founding chair of the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions, is developing curricula that she hopes will reach the college’s 1,400 incoming freshman.
In a combined effort to bring understanding of these elements outside the newspaper classroom, Rosenberg and I are organizing a High School News Literacy Summit at Baruch College in November 2010—a day of workshops and speakers that will serve 250 high school government students and teachers in New York City (5). “Because news is fragmented across the Internet and mixed with opinion, propaganda and misinformation, students need to be empowered to inform themselves,” said Rosenberg. The summit—the first of its kind—will provide workshops hosted by The News Literacy Project, Stony Brook University, The Pulitzer Center, New York Community Media Alliance and The LAMP.
In addition to teaching students that whatever they do online can follow them around for the rest of their lives, we also want to teach them that they are adding information to what’s out there and they have a responsibility to make sure they support their claims. Accreditation of facts and reliable sources are things I talk a lot about in my youth journalism classes and high school newspaper trainings; however, the point of news literacy is that there is a large social value to teaching these skills outside of traditional journalism environments. “The better informed they are, the better decisions they make about community,” said Liao.
An important aspect of news literacy is teaching how to “to judge the reliability and credibility of news reports and news sources,” according to Stony Brook University’s Center for News Literacy. We can incorporate this in our youth media programs during the research phase of their projects. When students talk about getting news online, as educators, have a conversation about what the sources are. If youth producers say they saw it on Yahoo, it is important to share that Yahoo News rarely does original reporting. When youth producers see AP (Associated Press), do they know what that means? If not, it is our responsibility to point it out as a teaching opportunity.
This form of fact checking is not new; it is inherent in the world of journalism. However, this attention to detail will help young people be more critical in their own work and in their own lives. Whether they are reading their favorite sneaker blog or producing a documentary on undocumented youth, they need to be able to distinguish fact from opinion and to understand the value of independent research and reporting. “News literacy is an essential skill as how [young people] are going to operate in the world,” said Katherine Fry, Ph.D. Fry the co-founder (along with DC Vito) of The LAMP, a New York-based media literacy organization that served 700 people (mostly youth) last year. Through The LAMP’s media producing workshops, participants learn to understand “how information is put together,” which Fry considers a crucial element to news literacy.
As Megan Garber (6) put it in the Columbia Journalism Review (7), “News literacy…is fundamentally about distinguishing—and appreciating—excellence.”(8) Fry said these skills will make them better prepared to handle college and the professional world when they leave our doors. It will also make their media pieces stronger, more believable and professional.
Lifelong Learners
News literacy advocates see the field as an audience-building technique—once you teach students why independently reported journalism is crucial to democracy and you give them the skills to evaluate the source of information, they will create a permanent place in their lives for quality media. The goal is to create a “community of people who are interested and take part in civic life,” Garber writes. This holds true in the youth media world as well—if we teach youth producers to pay close attention to the media in their lives, and help them express themselves and inform others through the media they produce.
In a previous YMR article, Lisa Lucas of the Tribeca Film Festival argued that “We cannot encourage students to think outside of the box without showing them what actually is outside of the box.”(9) True, but if they have never taken a close look of what is inside the box, then they won’t know the importance of branching out.
In my years in youth media, I have heard many arguments from practitioners who deliberately reject mainstream media, in their own lives and in the programs they run. Through my experience, I have seen that the practitioners who broaden their perspectives on the mainstream media better serve the young people in their programs. We have to help young people understand all media—not just alternative press.
Without a critical audience we are heading for information anarchy—an environment that will devour youth media. Just like a parent needs to train a palate to enjoy real food versus processed items from a box, we need to teach our students to consume quality media.It is our job to help young people understand the world of news and information that they are immersed in every day 24/7. It is not enough for us to help them create more news and more information; we need to show them how to make sense of what is available to them now.
Katina Paron is a journalism educator with 15 years of youth media experience. She is the co-director of the NYC High School Journalism Collaborative at Baruch College, where she is also an adjunct lecturer. She is the founding newspaper adviser for Achievement First Crown Heights High School and the Business of Sports School. She is an instructor with the Bronx Youth Journalism Initiative, par t of the Bronx News Network. As the co-founder and former Managing Director of the youth news agency, Children’s PressLine, she has worked with thousands of students to develop professional quality media that has been published in the Daily News, Newsday, Metro, Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Espn.com, among other places. She is a professional journalist who has focused on health, literary arts and youth media. Her work has been recognized by NY1 as “New Yorker of the Week” and by WCBS-TV as a “Hometown Hero.” Ms. Paron received her B.S. in journalism from Boston University.
Resources
Where can you learn more about news literacy?
• http://cima.ned.org/events/news-literacy.html
• www.edutopia.org/media-literacy-students-searching
• www.facebook.com/pages/News-Literacy/
• www.fairmediacouncil.org/
• www.huffingtonpost.com/shawn-healy/in-demand-news-literacy_b_247172.html
• http://myhsj.org/
• www.ned.org/cima/CIMA-Media_Support_Organizations_and_Media_Literacy-Report.pdf
• http://newstrust.net/guides
• http://novemberlearning.com/resources/information-literacy-resources/
• www.stonybrook.edu/journalism/newsliteracy/index.html
• www.thelampnyc.org
• www.thenewsliteracyproject.org
• http://wikiality.wikia.com/Main_Page
Endnotes
(1) Specifically, Teen Voices magazine in Boston, Children’s Express (RIP: 1975-2001) in New York and Children’s PressLine in New York.
(2) McCormick is an active supporter of youth media (including projects run by the author and is underwriting this issue of YMR) and is beginning to explore its news literacy involvement.
(3) “The Death and Life of the Great American Newspaper,” The Nation, April 6, 2009, http://www.thenation.com/article/death-and-life-great-american-newspapers
(4) Geanne Rosenberg co-directs the NYC High School Journalism Collaborative and teaches at Baruch College.
(5) We may have some room for NYC-based youth media programs. Please contact me for more information: Katina.paron@baruch.cuny.edu.
(6) Garber is a staff writer at the Columbia Journalism Review. She has covered the coverage of education, culture, the 2008 presidential campaign, and, most recently, news innovation for the magazine and its Web site, CJR.org.
(7) Columbia Journalism Review is a non-profit industry publication published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
(8) “Leap of Faith” by Megan Garber; July/August 2009.
(9) “Building the Critical Lens of a Captive Youth Audience,” by Lisa Lucas; Youth Media Reporter. April 15, 2008.
Author: Katina Paron
Youth Are the News
Last month 400 people from 74 countries gathered in Washington, D.C. for the 7th World Young Readers Conference (WYR). The attendees, mostly newspaper staff from either the business or editorial worlds, gathered to share ideas and gain inspiration about ways to expand their youth readership.
As a youth media practitioner, my reason for attending was two fold: I wanted to collect resources on the value of youth-produced content to newspaper readers young and old, and meet with “Youth Editors”—adult editors in charge of teen content—to discuss benefits of using youth-produced articles and how they incorporate youth voice in their newspapers.
At the conference, I discovered that some newspapers are making an effort to work with classrooms in journalism training—getting young people to understand how and why newspapers work and the ways in which newspapers are a viable resource for important information. Other newspapers, however, have different tactics and motivations which have little to do with incorporating youth media making. They are using gimmicks such as using a “Where’s Waldo” search feature as part of a concerted effort to capture the attention of youth and promote their products (in-print and on-line versions of the publication).
These efforts prioritize ‘brand loyalty’ and position youth solely as consumers, rather than as creative forces and thought leaders. News media ought to listen to youth voice and incorporate their creativity and leadership. The media should make space for youth viewpoints because not only are young people a future generation of mass readership, but are heavily currently covered in and depicted by the media. Youth want to be creators and contributors to news media as a way to engage with, and have voice in, their communities and world at large.
Newspapers in Education (NIE) and the World Association of Newspapers—sponsors of WYR—presented interesting reports at the conference on the state of young people and newspaper involvement. I talked to many NIE professionals about how they might use youth-produced content in their pages. Unfortunately for most papers, the NIE program is strictly a marketing venture. The focus is on readership numbers only, not content. Many NIE directors were not familiar or conversant with the relevance of recent research from the Newspaper Association of America, NIE’s parent group on young readers. Such research proves that teens who begin reading newspapers due to integrated youth content become lifelong readers—a fact that newspapers should not ignore. (To view the research, go to http://www.naafoundation.org/pdf/Foundation/lifelongreaders.pdf). NIE’s actions are short-sighted. They focus on short-term circulation increase rather than long-term readership potential.
Life-long readership of newspapers sustains the success of a news publication. To ensure that success, newspapers need youth to be involved as readers and active participants. The good news is there are ways for newspapers to involve young people in journalism news media. Several of these lessons and best practices surfaced at WYR.
Incorporate and Promote Youth Editorial Boards
A few newspaper representatives in attendance at the conference spoke proudly of their paper’s teen editorial boards. These boards have taken responsibility for producing a half-dozen signed editorials for the paper each year. In some cases, the youth editorials were the only youth-produced content that the paper had published.
Present at the conference, for example, was a 21-member youth advisory board that provides feedback, insight, and expertise to a Canadian newspaper. The board of teens meets monthly to discuss advertising campaigns and solve marketing questions. The teens even use AOL instant messenger on a regular basis with the Editor-in-Chief to discuss editorial components.
This youth advisory board is a great example of ways in which newspapers can incorporate youth voice and leadership in an organized, productive, and mutually beneficial manner. From my experience, this approach to editorial writing and generational power sharing is rare, but important. Taking youth feedback seriously and promoting youth perspective impacts readers of newspapers, providing insightful points of view from a cohort of young members in the community.
Acknowledge Youth as Spokespeople
At the conference it became evident that very few panelists had tried attracting youth readers by including them as part of their regular news stories as interviewees, witnesses, or simply members of the newspaper community. My frustration with this issue was validated during the conferences’ Youth Ambassador session during which 12 youth journalists from newspapers in the U.S., South Africa, Norway, Zambia, Hong Kong, Denmark, Sweden, and Dominican Republic gave a 60 minute presentation on how newspapers could engage young readers better. It was an excellent session presented by self-professed news geeks.
When Khothatso Mogwera from South Africa made the plea to the news executives in attendance to include youth as part of the paper’s news and editorial teams, I had to stop myself from giving a standing ovation. “They forget that we were there when these events take place,” he said. His colleagues echoed his sentiments that youth are affected by budget cuts, Social Security and political elections just as adults are, and youth viewpoints therefore must not be silenced.
If newspapers have a responsibility to fully and fairly reflect society and they continue to omit youth experiences and opinions, then it says something drastically fatal about the lack of respect we give young people as valuable members of the community.
Incorporate Youth Voice in Teen Sections
The teen sections presented at the conference had the most variety. Some newspapers simply had one teen page while others had 16-page weekly supplements. Some were adult produced, yet many had teams of youth that worked together on their allocated pages. “Youth Editors” at the conference were often adults that worked on teen issues of their newspaper.
Youth editors experienced conflicts between what newspapers were told youth wanted and what newspapers ultimately ended up doing. The young editors expressed a common belief that overall, youth do not want to be ‘ghettoized’ into teen sections and they do not want to read adult writing that tries to speak for them. If this is not what young people want then why are so many papers doing it?
Partly, this issue is due to the fact that newspapers are so painfully slow at adapting their content to meet the needs of a transitioning community (i.e. youth and immigrants) that they solve the issue with supplements instead of a whole newspaper overhaul. By having a “youth” or “teen” section, the paper attempts to cover news specific to such a transitioning group. However, they must be relevant and resonant teen sections that incorporate youth content and opinions.
An NIE representative at “757,” The Virginian-Pilot’s teen section and winner of a “World Young Reader Award,” was in tune with youth readers when she commented to a panel, “The kids who we want to read our work don’t relate to the format or the style of writing.” This is a valid concern for youth media practitioners who are trying to create an authentic adult-to-adult conversation. How do you prevent the “adultification” of youth material but still have a product that can be valuable to adults? How do we get youth buy-in on adult-formatted and adult led newspapers?
Youth Ambassadors, who provided youth perspective at the conference, explained that youth buy-in comes from having young people create both the rules for content as well as the content itself. The need for this dual level of involvement is an important lesson that youth media practitioners have learned and continue to advocate for. The key is to make sure young people feel that they are recognized as viable contributors and their thoughts and creative perspectives are important.
Even though Youth Ambassadors at the conference stressed the value of including youth in ‘regular’ parts of newspapers, they still see the value of a separate section for young people. In fact, the Ambassadors offered attendees a clear and compelling picture for the perfect ‘teen section.’
The Perfect Teen Section would:
• have its own identity, including its own website;
• allow readers to share photos through a gallery;
• contain Vox Pops or man-on-the street interviews;
• contain a mix of editorial/sports and entertainment;
• shout-outs so readers could feel part of a community;
• include a calendar section so readers could be aware of events;
• have news alternatives like podcasts and video casts;
• pay its writers, or if unpaid, provide in-house training, internships or scholarship opportunities;
• have a diverse staff;
• be advertised and have “teasers” in the “parent” paper;
• sponsor events like concerts and sports; and
• have monthly meetings and an opportunity for teen writers to interact with professional journalists.
According to the World Association of Newspapers, over one billion people read a newspaper every day. A goal for us in the youth media field should be to figure out what the newspaper industry’s emphasis on young readers means to youth. From the perspective of a youth media professional, incorporating youth voice and contribution to media is priority. Adult “Youth Editors” ought to support newspapers to incorporate youth boards, acknowledge youth as spokespeople, and youth voice in teen sections.
A newspapers’ attempt to integrate youth leadership and attract young readers means more room for youth media organizations to create authentic material and advocate for youth contribution. It just might make our jobs richer—increasing the diversity of our content, purpose, trainings, and approaches to youth media in the news.
Katina Paron is the Co-founder and Editorial/Program Director of Children’s PressLine in New York City www.cplmedia.org.
Teamwork, Leadership, and New(s) Coverage: Children’s PressLine’s shares Lessons of a High-Profile Summer Partnership
For seven fabulous weeks last summer, Children’s PressLine (CPL), the youth journalism organization that I run, moved into the New York Daily News building to produce two pages a week for the newspaper’s weekly borough supplements, Brooklyn News and Queens News. We had needed a new, temporary home for our summer program and through a mixture of perseverance, insider help, and good timing, The Daily News told us we could move in, as long as we produced work for two of their borough sections.
The Daily News is the most read daily paper in New York City and the opportunity for our youth journalists to get their work in front of 2.8 million people every week was thrilling. We have covered some amazing stories in the past five years—the 2004 Republican and Democratic National Conventions, 2002 United Nations Special Session on the Rights of the Children, juvenile offenders on death row in Texas. And, we have partnered with some major news outlets—BBC World Service, CBS Radio, Boston Globe. However, I knew this project with The Daily News would be the apex of Children’s PressLine’s career to date.
While this was an exciting venture, it was not easy. In a new and temporary space with a high, weekly demand of articles, we had a few challenging hurdles to undergo as a group.
Redesigning the content
Our first hurdle was figuring out what the pages would look like. Normally, we produce one or two articles that total 1,500 words for New York Amsterdam News, one of our regular outlets. The page is text-heavy but we like to be able to give the interviewee the space to tell his or her full story. We also generally submit an illustration produced by a freelance illustrator that works with us pro bono.
This would never work for The Daily News. First of all, we only had 850 words to work with for the page and second, we needed photography not illustrations. The Daily News, after all, made its mark as “New York’s Picture Paper.”
We also needed a way to showcase our interviews with politicians. Understandably, 90% of CPL’s interviews are with kids, but 10% are with politicians. We wanted to make sure that politician interviews were part of the page every week.
So what did we do? First, we took on a new approach to our page layout and focused more on content than the word restrictions extended from The Daily News. As long as we could cover series topics, like education reform and homeless gay teens, we’d work with the word restrictions.
To manage the photography, we hired a photography intern. Aeden initially interviewed for an editorial position but as luck would have it she had photojournalism experience that we needed.
And to solve the politician question we invented a column called “BackTalk: kids speak, officials respond.” “BackTalk” is a Q-&-A style column, with the “Q” being a quality of life concern from a young person in the community and the “A” coming from a public policy official responsible for the issue. We planned to have each page to contain one or two stories and a “BackTalk” column.
Redesigning the program
We had a very short time to prepare the youth journalists and staff for this new venture. We knew that youth from our current program would be working with us this summer but that we’d probably have another 20 who were new to journalism. We had to redesign our standard summer program material to design a training that would prepare all the youth involved, despite their experience level, for the huge responsibility ahead.
So what did we do? We created a workshop that teen editors conducted with youth in Brooklyn and Queens, which allowed us to collect several voices and “quality of life” concerns from local teens all at once for the pieces in “BackTalk.” The key to these pages was interviewing local kids and using local statistics. We provided a service to the groups of young people by training them in advocacy journalism skills and providing contact information for their local politicians. An alumna of CPL had just graduated college and was available to coordinate the workshops and work with the teen editors that acted as facilitators. I would work together with the teen editors to schedule public official interviews integral to the column. We tested the workshop at our “New Members Training” in June and were able to iron out a lot of kinks early on.
Needing photography also meant doing off-site stories, which we often do more frequently in the summer. Unlike video or radio programs, we do our interviews over the phone and this is often necessary when we are working on national stories for The Online News Hour or Scripps Howard News Service. Because I’m a print girl by nature it was a constant struggle for me to remember that yes, we need pictures.
Staffing
Going into the summer, CPL had two full-time employees and two college interns. CPL has always worked with interns to act as interview schedulers, mentors and managers for the teams of youth journalists. We had to add staff for this project, but any extra money in our budget was being spent on the logistics of moving the computers and materials to the new space at The Daily News office.
So how did we get more staff with no money? We invested in more interns. Our two interns immediately got promotions. Chelsea (Brown University) became Brooklyn Bureau Chief and Megan (Pennsylvania State) was Queens Bureau Chief. They had the same page requirements but needed to come up with different stories.
I hired Lizette (Rutgers University) as the editorial assistant to both Bureau Chiefs. Now my interns had an intern. They were very excited. Collectively, these amazing interns were traveling nearly 5 hours each way to and from CPL and worked nearly 30 hours a week Monday through Thursday. Chelsea and Meghan were each responsible for scheduling interviews for 15 youth journalists who were on their teams. Another intern, Laura (New York University), worked with the youth on managing the editorial flow. Latesha, who was 8-months pregnant with her first child, was our transcriber thanks to an externship program at Inwood House, a social service organization that works with teen moms. Amanda (Wesleyan University) was the former CPL alumna who facilitated our Media and Community workshops. (Since then we’ve been able to hire Amanda as CPL’s Youth Coordinator.)
Where did these amazing interns come from?
I distributed our internship positions far and wide. In April, I had conducted 20 phone interviews with potential interns and it was clear in my phone conversations with Chelsea and Megan that they had had extensive experience at their college newspapers and understood the mission of CPL. Laura had worked with us the previous spring and we invited her to stay once we got the Daily News deal. Lizette and Aeden’s resumes came in at just the right time. Aeden had the photography experience we needed. And Lizette had time to give and an eagerness to learn – perfect skills for an editorial assistant. I sat down with every intern and walked them through all necessary steps and involved each as a fellow teammate. I took their questions as possible program flaws and we discussed as a group, paths to execution.
Learning lessons
Together, by the end of the summer we produced 17 news pages, which involved more than 40 articles, conducted interviews with 220 kids and 22 public officials, and held 10 Media and Community workshops with 157 young people at community centers throughout Brooklyn and Queens. In seven weeks we had increased our regular summer workload by 300%. Read two examples of these articles in PDF form from both Queens News and Brooklyn News.
I am extremely proud of the work we did last summer for The Daily News. Not only because the kids were smart, passionate, and excited about sinking their teeth into the project, but because as a team, the following key lessons were reinforced:
• Do not hide youth from the assignment. Because CPL works with so many news outlets we often get assignments that we pass to youth journalists, versus having youth come up with a story idea that we pitch to editors. We learned from this experience that we need to expose youth more to the bosses that give us the assignments. The youth recognized and experienced high demands and expectations from the Daily News editors, which was empowering. The high level of responsibility was transformational to witness as teens, adults, and interns collaborated to achieve every goal and deadline.
• Work as a team alongside youth. As a group, we were able to share the demands, the risks, and the hurdles, which made our collective experiences even more profound, rewarding, and powerful. As a bonus, we got journalists to step up to the plate when it came to post-production elements of stories, such as transcribing, editing, and writing introductions. As a result, we decided to incorporate these elements more strategically in our regular program.
• The program is flexible if we let it be. For so long, CPL used the same methodology and training methods in its work. There were hitches but we found the combination of peer mentoring, leadership, and civic engagement successful in our journalism program. The Daily News project forced us to change and expand this. It highlighted many of our organization’s strengths and complemented our current work.
Reaping Benefits
As an organization, CPL gained so much from our high-profile partnership. We went into the fall with a full bag of tricks to grab the attention of editors and empower local youth.
• Speak truth to power using “BackTalk.” I love “BackTalk” as a resource to make public officials accountable to youth concerns. Through the column we are able to share kids’ quality of life problems to a wide audience that needs to know that kids are affected by the decisions that adults make. The best part of “BackTalk” is that we get to make politicians and public officials accountable to their youngest constituents. This column embodies a guiding principle of CPL – bringing authentic youth voices to adults in power. We do this by using the power of the media to publicly question policy officials on their decisions or their avoidance of an issue that directly affects young people.
For example: Why aren’t there bike racks in Canarsie and teen community centers in Corona? Why are there so many sexual offenders in Fresh Meadows? Why can’t kids learn about condoms in school? It’s a perfect column and gratifying for youth to produce. “BackTalk” is now looking for a new home and those of us at CPL are excited by the thought of producing it once again.
• Create enhanced workshops and trainings. In the past, whenever we had been asked to hold a workshop with youth at conferences or in classrooms, we conduct trainings on how to interview. Now, especially from “BackTalk,” we have new Media and Community workshops to offer. These workshops provide a space for youth to express their concerns and help our journalists become stronger at identifying story leads.
• Street cred from the newspaper world. The day after our interview with NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein was published – it ran as a two-page spread that also featured local kids giving feedback about their school – we got an email from Arul Luis, the News Editor at The Daily News, which stated: “The Klein interview was coup, upstaging everyone else. My congratulations to your team.” Being able to share that email with our youth journalists, their parents, and our interns was one of the most satisfying moments I’ve had in my 12 years spent in youth media.
• Memories when time gets tough. Nearly every day at the Daily News offices, teen editor Jose from Bronx International High School would say to me: “Ms., you are in a good mood today, no?” “Ms., you smile a lot.” “Ms., you really love your job.” And nearly every time I’d tell him. “Juan, I’m happy because you are doing very important work and you are doing it well.” Just like other youth media programs, my work at CPL doesn’t always have this much fanfare so it is nice to have these amazing memories to keep me going.
The Daily News and CPL Today
Our agreement with The Daily News was for a summer project. We would have enjoyed another summer of collaboration, but we knew that the offices had been scheduled for other purposes. We were able to keep the door open wide enough to approach the paper about having us next summer. From the experience at The Daily News, our organization has certainly matured and grown exponentially in experience.
On our last day in The Daily News building, as I was packing up the newsroom, I received this note from one of our teen editors.
“Thank you for taking the time to make this one of the best summers I’ve had. You’ve taught me so much. Seeing my name in the newspaper has made me one of the happiest girls in the city. You make a difference in kids’ lives everyday. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to take part in that.” –Jasmin, 17
It doesn’t get much better than that does it? From our experiences last summer, I feel a lot more confident about approaching other mainstream publications and websites with similar partnerships. Our ability to cover New York as a local community has grown and our ability to provide enriching experiences that empower young people has strengthened. The project may have only lasted seven weeks but it provided decades of lessons.
Katina Paron is the Co-founder and Editorial/Program Director of Children’s PressLine in New York City. www.cplmedia.org