Category: 2006

A new report by CBS News explores American teens’ ever-evolving relationship with technology. The report is extensive, comprising over a dozen articles and interviews covering topics including how technology may affect brain chemistry, the use of technology for self expression, and the challenges of closing the digital divide.

“The immigration issue hits so close to home that many teenagers defied school officials and their families by taking part in the walkouts. And that taste for political activism seems to have ignited a fire,” the New York Times reports. “Having discovered almost by accident their ability to make themselves heard, many are now taking that energy to join student unions, register to vote, learn about political organizing and in general broaden their political awareness of other social justice issues.”

Making the Case for Media Education

Denise Gaberman recently spoke with YMR about the growing number of educators who, like herself, first learned about youth media by studying it at a university. Several books inform Gaberman’s academic research, including Literacy in a Digital World: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Education by Kathleen Tyner, who teaches media education at the University of Texas, and Teaching Youth Media: A Critical Guide to Literacy, Video Production, & Social Change by Steve Goodman, founder and director of the Educational Video Center. Both “illustrate the importance of a multi-literate society and the need to have a strong media education movement in this country,” Gaberman explained.

Bringing Youth Media into Schools

Now working to bring media education into public schools, Gaberman often refers to the Center for Digital Storytelling website for resources to develop short media projects in classrooms. Gaberman finds it especially useful for teaching media to students and teachers who are “strapped for resources and time, have limited media making expertise, and don’t have the professional video or digital equipment at their fingertips,” she wrote in an email. “In my experience the students and teachers are then able to focus on the art of storytelling, literacy, and the process of creating meaningful multi-media projects without as many technical restrictions.”

Strengthening the Youth Beat

Last month Donna Myrow of L.A. Youth wrote in YMR about the need for the mainstream press to integrate youth media into their usual fare. For help making her case, Myrow keeps Mike Male’s Framing Youth: 10 Myths About the Next Generation “highly accessible” on her bookshelf. “I think anyone working in youth media should have it as part of their library,” she says. It “challenges the media to look beyond what the policy wonks are offering,” when covering the youth issues, “and to ask where these statistics and trends are coming from, and why is the discussion almost always focused on teen violence when teens actually commit fewer crimes than adults.” As the book was written in 1999, some of Male’s statistics are dated, says Myrow, but his points are still relevant.

Defending Free Expression

But just as the media too often scapegoats teens for society’s ills, Mark Goodman of the Student Press Law Center warns against scapegoating the media itself. That’s why Goodman, who recently spoke with YMR about the advent of multimedia projects in schools, admires It’s Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture’s Influence on Children by Karen Sternheimer. “Like most great books, it defies conventional wisdom,” explained Goodman. “It presents a compelling explanation of why media bashing is both unjustified and dangerous.” Successfully defending free expression for youth journalists and all Americans, contends Goodman, depends on more people making this kind of argument.

Continue reading On Their Bookshelves (and Screens)

“The past few years have seen an explosion in the number of schools taking to the web to find out what students are saying and doing. And punishment has followed,” reports Salon. But is penalizing young people for postings on social networking sites fair, or even constitutional? Some experts, like Mark Goodman of Student Press Law Center, say the law and the first amendment is on the students’ side, and that it is parents’ role to discipline teens for what they’re doing online, not the schools’. Others argue that it’s only to be expected that young people may face consequences resulting from their online postings.

MTV recently released the results of a research study on how youth perceive “activism.” The report, which involved interviews with more than 1200 young people, also explores what motivates young people to become involved in social causes, and what stops them. A desire to help others, a personal connection with a cause, as well as parental encouragement are among the main factors that propel youth into action, according to a report summary on MTV’s website. The full report is also available.

Six years ago, Denise Gaberman took a graduate class at New York University on education and media. Associate professor of media ecology JoEllen Fisherkeller wanted her students not just to study the theory behind media education, but also to observe it. She sent them to community centers, schools, and nonprofits to see youth media making in action.
Under Fisherkeller’s tutelage, Gaberman began circulating among the numerous organizations in New York City that worked with teens on video projects. She interviewed the founder of Global Action Project, Diana Coryat, and spent 10 months interning as a teacher’s aid at Educational Video Center (EVC). She “journaled” about what she observed in the field, for school credit.
Gaberman enrolled in “Literacy Through Photography,” a weeklong seminar for teachers held through Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies. There, Gaberman learned “to teach visual media in the classroom, specifically in a school—not an afterschool program,” she says. And how to create curricula “in an interesting way where all the lessons build on each other.”
After she left NYU, Gaberman brought what she’d learned to New York City schools. Working for a Board of Education program, she helped coordinate eighth graders at Middle School 80 in making a video about the cleanup of the nearby Bronx River. The project was ambitious. In science class, students tested the river’s water. In social studies, they learned its history. For their 90-minute “literacy block,” they interviewed and filmed local figures prominent in the river’s history. Gaberman met weekly with teachers to keep everyone on track. It finished a success.
Having access to all the youth media groups she’d gotten to know while studying with Fisherkeller, says Gaberman, “really helped me to understand how to do it.” And having spent a number of years reflecting on her experiences in a university classroom taught Gaberman how to adapt lessons used at youth media nonprofits for schools. “Researching how to work between schools and nonprofits really helped me out there,” says Gaberman.

Youth Media as a Subject of Study

Educators staffing youth media nonprofits have long understood their programs as potential “laboratories for schools”—sites that discover practices schools can use to get students making videos, pod casts, web pages, and other forms of multimedia. But figuring out how best to get their practices into schools, where they can reach more young people, has never been easy. School administrators are often wary of working with outside groups. Many require extensive convincing that media-making actually helps kids learn, or that it fits with the requisite “standards” that schools are scrambling to meet. Curricula used in afterschool programs—which often work with a handful of young people at a time and have the luxury of focusing nearly exclusively on media production—do not directly translate into a 50-minute classroom of 30-40 students, where media production is not the main subject. And extracurricular youth media programs don’t have the layers of bureaucracy and censorship that limit student expression the way schools do.
But over the past few years, as media-making technology has become cheaper and more ubiquitous, educators nationwide are becoming increasingly aware of the need for all young people to know how to make and analyze media. JoEllen Fisherkeller, part of a pioneering movement in higher education that organizes curricula around the theory and practice of youth media for media and education degree programs, is one of a small but growing number of professors who train current and future educators in media making. Schools across the country are turning to university programs like Fisherkeller’s to train teachers to bring media programs into the classroom.
“There’s a growing movement on the university level that youth media is a subject of study for people going into teaching,” explains Steven Goodman, executive director of EVC. EVC, the youth media nonprofit where Gaberman interned, now co-teaches an NYU class with Fisherkeller. EVC staff demonstrate how to get teens creating documentary video, while Fisherkeller provides the theory behind EVC’s methods.

Training Future and Currrent Teachers

Some of the university programs on youth media primarily train future teachers. Others, like the Duke University program Gaberman attended or Houston-based Southwest Alternate Media Project (SWAMP), largely help current teachers and school administrators bring media making and analysis into the classroom. Many do a combination of “in-service and pre-service” teacher training, says Kathleen Tyner, assistant professor in the University of Texas Department of Radio, Television, and Film. The Texas university, says Tyner, has the distinction of being the first school in the country to require all prospective teachers (except those in math and science) to take a media education course. Many expect other education schools to soon follow suit.
Because education-program professors confer regularly with schools, future teachers, and youth media organizations, they can smooth the barriers that typically exist between nonprofits and classroom teachers. For instance, schools are often wary of partnering with outside groups, fearing they will “parachute” into the school for a short time and then disappear.
But universities already have relationships with schools as well as with instructors who need “professional development credits” to continue teaching. “The partnership with a university program enables the youth media organization to share what it learned with the faculty and students at a university, who has those interests,” and who can ultimately get their methods in classrooms, explains Renee Hobbs, associate professor at Temple University Department of Broadcasting Telecommunications and Mass Media.

Speaking the Language of Schools

David Considine, a professor at Appalachian State University Department of Media Studies and Instructional Technology, which offers a master’s degree in media literacy, agrees. “If you’re going to get to schools you need to speak the language of schools. You need to be aware how the state and national standards are already compatible with media production, and a lot of administrators aren’t even aware of that,” he says, noting that universities already speak the language of schools. Considine recommends that youth media groups wanting to partner with education schools present their curricula at education conferences where professors like himself can observe it.
But education professors warn that that it’s unrealistic for youth media groups to expect their curricula to be adopted as is. In her class at the University of Texas, Tyner chooses among various lessons and media from programs including EVC, the Portland Museum, Appalshop, and the Student Press Law Center, then fits them into curricula for “a 50-minute classroom with minimal equipment” and many students vying for attention, says Tyner. “I show [students] all the canned curriculum, but I want them to customize their curriculum to the needs of their students,” says Tyner.
At Temple University in Philadelphia, Renee Hobbs teaches a class similar to Fisherkeller’s that sends students into the community where they can intern at the local schools and programs involved with teaching young people media production. In class they explore the historical context of media education, race and class in media production, and how to evaluate youth media programs. Hobbs’ students have brought the lessons learned in her class and through their internships to other afterschool centers, community programs, as well as public and private schools.
Yes! (Youth Empowerment Services) has had several interns from Hobbs’ class. Education director Michael Sacks acknowledges these interns will most likely go on to spread Yes! methods in other education settings, but he does not consider working with them to be a form of teacher development for Yes! Rather, he views them as a much-needed resource to keep his program running smoothly, which is exactly what makes sending students into youth media organizations like his a “win-win” situation says Hobbs. These internships, says Hobbs, provide “a kind of cross-fertilization.”
Denise Gaberman herself recently left the Board of Education to train teachers in technology through the New York Institute of Technology. She says she’s convinced that educators who research the youth media field through university programs, like those where she studied and the one where she now works, may well be the answer for youth media groups wanting to spread their practices. “Ideas at educational schools are filtered into public schools” through graduating students, says Gaberman. “Those are the new leaders. Those are the new teachers.”

Continue reading The Youth Media Nonprofit as Classroom

Soap operas, satires, and other TV programming created by college students has long gone unseen, for lack of ways to distribute the shows. Now, with the Open Student Television Network (OSTN), an Internet-based TV network launched in 2005, college-created TV shows, many of high quality, have a chance to reach a wide audience.
OSTN, the Wall Street Journal explains, “solves a big problem confronting campus television curriculums: Students are making more and more shows, but individual colleges don’t have enough programs to build true TV schedules. That makes it hard to develop much of a regular audience even if campuses do have a distribution system. By aggregating offerings from different schools—in essence syndicating college shows—there is more than enough content to fill a network.”

The following is adapted from an article that appeared in Nieman Reports.
I made my decision to publish a newspaper for teenagers in Los Angeles on the morning of January 13, 1988, the day the United States Supreme Court struck down student press rights in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier. That decision gave school officials broad powers to censor student newspapers.
That afternoon a dozen teenagers sat around my kitchen table talking about issues that affected their lives. Together we wondered how we would publish our own newspaper with no money. We didn’t even have a computer. But we found some resources in the community—grants from the James Irvine Foundation and Bank of America Foundation, a few old typewriters from the Los Angeles Times, and a meeting place in a senior citizen center. These were enough to launch the first issue.
Starting small with 2,500 copies published twice a year for two years, then growing year by year, we now publish six times each year, with 120,000 copies each issue. L.A. Youth has a readership of more than 400,000 in Los Angeles County. Our newspaper is read by students in public and private schools, by those who attend nearly 400 community-based youth programs, and can be found at most L.A. county libraries. We post every issue on our website, and mail a teacher’s guide to 1,200 teachers who use L.A. Youth in their classrooms.
In the beginning, L.A. Youth grew rapidly with local foundation support. We eventually opened an office in mid-city, purchased new computers, and hired two editors. By 1994, though the newspaper was well received, the costs of producing it were escalating. By then we had a full-time staff of four and 200 teens eager to join the staff.
It was especially a struggle to raise money for the press run. Foundations and corporations were willing to pay for literacy and job skills training but donations for newsprint and printing was a challenge. Without help, we couldn’t expand and the demand increased every month from readers throughout L.A. County.
So I went looking for support from the newspaper industry. I approached Los Angeles Times publisher David Laventhol, and asked if the Times would contribute paper and printing. I explained how our young reporters were helping their peers have a better understanding of the society they live in and the forces that act on them, and showing them ways to gain more control over their lives. I described ways in which we do this, through news stories, self-help articles and in personal accounts. I talked about how our stories are written in an authentic teen voice, which gives L.A. Youth its street credibility with readers.
Laventhol listened. When the meeting ended, he offered the Times’s support. He asked me how many copies we print. I picked a nice round number, 100,000, when we actually could only afford to print 35,000. He agreed to help us.

The Los Angeles Times Steps Up

Printing our newspaper was just the beginning. Soon, former L.A. Times senior editor Noel Greenwood joined our nonprofit organization’s board of directors. Then came the Times’s donation of computers, cameras, scanners, and other equipment to assist our struggling newspaper. Today, the Times newsroom operations editor, Dave Rickley, serves on our board, and he encourages colleagues from the Times to work with our newspaper. People who work in the prepress department, production and photo lab, the art director, and other folks involved with operations have volunteered. And as our teens report stories, they have received mentoring from Times editorial staff, too.
L.A. Youth articles are often about traditional teen interests, such as summer jobs, getting into college, education, and getting a date for the prom. But there is room for controversy in the paper, too. When our teenagers set out to explore difficult and complicated topics like teen pregnancy, substance abuse, AIDS, race relations, homelessness, and gangs, L.A. Times reporters, editors and lawyers have shared their expertise. Editor Sue Horton mentored teen reporter Josie Valderrama through the maze of internal affairs police documents for his year-long investigative project about alleged police abuse of local teens. The resulting article published in the summer of 1990 drew recognition from national media, including Time and 60 Minutes.
A few years ago, when I wanted to expand the youth voice to a wider audience, I spoke with several L.A. Times editors to ask if they’d consider reprinting our articles. Former Metro Editor Bill Boyarsky took the idea seriously and reprinted Gohar Galyan’s riveting article on life inside a year-round, overcrowded school. And one of our cover stories, written by a homeless youth sleeping behind a Hollywood Boulevard theater, made the front page of the Metro section.
The headline on June 17, 2000, screamed “Tribune Co. acquires the Los Angeles Times.” I took a deep breath, answered the dozens of calls from friends inquiring about this merger and hoped nothing would change. In fact, since that day the relationship between our two newspapers has grown stronger. Publisher Jeff Johnson has kept the presses rolling for L.A. Youth.
However, during the past two years I have missed seeing some of our best stories find a broader readership in the Times. As the war took place in Iraq, for example, I kept hoping the new editors would see the relevance of the teen perspective on the war And who knows better how teens feel about not finding a summer job in order to pay for college than those facing this situation? Or who can speak more powerfully about the impact of the ever-increasing classroom size on student learning?

Newspapers Learn From Us

The newspaper industry is in the midst of tremendous change and it’s a hard time for youth publications to get their attention—the industry is losing readers, downsizing editorial staff, competing with online publications. But each year newspapers spend lots of money and time on focus groups and readership surveys as they try to figure out how to attract younger readers. By looking closely at publications like ours, and by reprinting our articles, they might make significant headway.
The Los Angeles Times isn’t the only paper that has realized this. In 2005, the New York Times began printing the New York-based teen paper New Youth Connections. New Expression, written by teens in Chicago, has been printed by the Chicago Tribune and received financial support from them for over a dozen years. VOX, in Atlanta, matches teens with mentors from the Atlanta Journal Constitution and CNN.
Though it’s a tough time for youth-produced newspapers to get a long-term commitment from their local newspaper, it’s important for them to establish a relationship. Newspapers investing in youth publications benefits both parties—newspapers reach the next generation of readers, and teen-written publications keep the presses rolling.
Donna C. Myrow is founder and executive director of L.A. Youth.

Continue reading Keeping the Youth Presses Rolling, with Help from the Newspaper Industry

A new study by Jupiter Research has found that young people get their news from TV first, online portals second. But most portals, Editorsweblog reports, get their news from professional media outlets, newspapers included.

Learning.Now reports that in an effort to thwart online predators, members of Congress have proposed new legislation that would require public schools and libraries nationwide to block online social online networking sites like MySpace.
But such efforts may be futile. As the Dallas Morning News reports (registration required), wherever there’s an Internet filter, students find a way to flout it.