(Left) Ingrid Hu Dahl, editor of YMR & (Right) Antoine Haywood, YMR peer review board member/People TV Atlanta
Letter from the Editor
Welcome to YMR’s Southeast Volume 3 | Issue 2, where practitioners in Atlanta, GA and Chapel Hill, NC investigate youth media practice and share their insights to the field. With support from Open Society Institute, these practitioners and their colleagues met on February 18, 2009 at People TV to discuss the most pressing challenges of their work. Following this meeting, contributors wrote and revised drafts that were reviewed by a local peer, a member of YMR’s national peer review board, and AED/YMR staff, as a means to engage a youth media rich and yet underrepresented region to the field.
These articles present an insider’s view of the landscape of the city as well as ideas for the field to partner with corporation “CSR;” to instill diversity curriculum in youth media programs; to utilize the cell phone as an accessible means of content creation and distribution; and to partner with local access centers so young people can present their media on Television, a medium that they consume more than create or critique.
I want to thank all four writers—Selah Abrams, Dominick Brady, Jeremy Taylor and Rachel Wallack—for their dedication and hard work. A special thanks to Kelly Nuxoll, YMR’s writing coach, and Christine Newkirk, YMR’s graduate intern, for their suggestions, feedback and editing.
Many thanks to Antoine Haywood, YMR’s peer review board member based in Atlanta, who was instrumental in organizing and leading this cohort. The following is his introduction to readers of the Southeast issue titled, “Southern Voices:”
“As a youth media practitioner, I believe it is healthy to always seek out ways we can further the quality and amount of collaborative work—especially in regions like the southeast—that are sometimes isolated from nationwide efforts to expand the field.
In six years of working with youth and community technology programs, I have been fortunate to meet a number of people within the region who are passionate about the type of work we do. I have made it a personal mission to help these individuals and organizations through networking youth media organizations, practitioners and academics throughout the southeast. Sharing resources, exchanging ideas about best practices and strategic models enables southeastern youth media organizations to provide better services for our communities.
When invited to participate in a regional cohort for Youth Media Reporter, I jumped at the opportunity. A southeast-focused issue of YMR provides us a unique opportunity to raise awareness about our successes, needs and future visions of enhancing the field.
I am proud to have had this opportunity to facilitate the convening of southeastern regional practitioners for YMR. Overall, youth media work in the southeast is in dire need of funding, capacity building and human resource support. This issue of YMR provides a space for southeastern youth media organizations to communicate our challenges and successes, to reach out to similar organizations in other regions of the country, and demonstrate the strength and geographical expanse of the youth media field to potential supporters. As stakeholders in youth media, we have to speak up and strengthen our ties to national efforts that strive to expand the field.
I’d like to thank YMR, AED and Open Society Institute for giving us an opportunity to make our voices heard.”
We welcome you to join the conversation for each of these articles using YMR’s “comment” feature. If you are interested in posting a pod or vodcast response, please contact idahl@aed.org.
P.S. Subscribers to YMR’s annual print journal now can reserve copies of Volume 3 via credit card!
Warmly,
Ingrid Hu Dahl, Editor, YMR
Youth Media Reporter is managed by the Academy for Educational Development
