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Critical of what they consider attempts by conservatives to take over mass media and public broadcasting, two U.S. congress members have introduced a bill seeking “to undo the massive consolidation of the media that has been ongoing for nearly 20 years,” says the Hollywood Reporter (via Mediachannel.org).

The YouthLearn Initiative and the Educational Video Center (EVC) are developing a network to provide resources, curriculum, and professional development opportunities for youth media educators. To help shape the network, YouthLearn and EVC are asking anyone who has worked with young people making media to fill out an online survey.

While teaching journalism to young people in Beijing, Cliff Hahn became cautiously hopeful that tomorrow’s leaders will leave the world in better shape than they found it. His dispatch appears on Connect for Kids.

The more time children spend watching TV, the poorer their grades, three studies recently concluded, according to Reuters. On the other hand, state anti-tobacco ads may really be preventing teens from smoking, research published in the journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine suggests.
A recent review of research into the impact of sex in the media on young people reveals that little examination has been done on the topic, according to the Medical Institute for Sexual Health. Given that today’s young people are exposed to more sexual imagery in the media than ever before, a New York Times piece on current independent films providing refreshingly realistic glimpses of teen sexuality is especially timely.

Avoiding the “usual Powerpoint slides and a longwinded speech,” the keynote speaker at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) found “a whole new way to tell the story of education and youth media,” observes the Digital Divide Network. Deneen Frazier-Bowen “pulled an Anna Deveare Smith and performed a series of characters to help paint a portrait of what it’s like for today’s kids to be growing up as digital natives.” DDN offers free podcasts of the performance, too.

Youth Media Reporter asked funders whether their decision to support an organization is influenced by knowing that the group’s work has been picked up by a mainstream media outlet. The short answer? A resounding “yes.” The funders YMR contacted want to see youth media distributed as widely as possible. “We are invested in youth media’s reach and impact on the broader public,” explained Jee Kim of the Surdna Foundation.
Mark Hallett, senior program officer of the McCormick Tribune Foundation journalism program, agreed. “It’s a shame we don’t hear the views of this generation as often as we should,” said Hallett. “It’s wonderful to find groups who are finding ways to get the word out to as broad an audience as possible.”
But these views might primarily reflect the perspectives of national or regional funders, explained Christopher Shearer, director of grantmaking at the National Geographic Education Foundation. Many of the locally based foundations fund youth media primarily for what Shearer calls “local engagement” outcomes, such as keeping kids in a safe place after school or helping them build skills that can lead to jobs. It’s the national or regional funders, like National Geographic’s Education Foundation (and most of the funders who the YMR contacted for this article), who are more likely to look for “other desired outcomes on which the decision to award a grant rests,” said Shearer.
These outcomes could include raising the awareness of why youth should participate in policymaking, or demonstrating the importance of including diverse voices in the media. In these cases, if a youth media organization receives pickup by a mainstream news outlet, “they are more likely to communicate the foundation’s goals along with their media product,” said Shearer. “In a sense, these organizations are providing additional leverage by reaching the general public.”
Youth media groups focused specifically on community engagement might want to look closer to home for funding. But as all foundations “increasingly stress measurement and leverage,” said Sherarer, “pickup by mainstream media afford a youth media organization a competitive edge in the grants application process—as well as a greater role in growing the youth media field to the point that mainstream media itself might adopt and institutionalize the concept.”
“Knowing that community-based youth media organizations are working to add more authentic voices to the discussion is bound to impress a funder,” agreed Alyce Myatt, former media program officer for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and currently a consultant to the independent media and philanthropic communities agrees. “But it’s important to include information on the work printed or broadcast so that the funder can gauge the value of the content.”

Continue reading What They’re Thinking

A recent New York Times article on Radio Rookies (registration required) gives a concise overview of how a youth media project initially designed to help teenage participants can develop a life of its own. Since its founding as a “do-gooder” project, Radio Rookies‘ stories have become a staple on NPR affiliate WNYC and have received national attention on NPR. They provide listeners “a glimpse into people they may run across on the subway every day but never have a relationship with,” WNYC’s vice president of programming said. And the impact doesn’t end there—Radio Rookies helps the station attract young listeners, and because the stories are told by their peers, teenaged students respond enthusiastically to them in the classroom.

A U.S. appeals court recently ruled that a controversial 1988 Supreme Court decision allowing high schools to restrict the free speech rights of student newspapers may apply to public colleges and universities as well, Inside Higher Ed reports. “This decision gives college administrators ammunition to argue that many traditionally independent student activities are subject to school censorship,” said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. “I fear it’s just a matter of time before a university prohibits a student group from bringing an unpopular speaker to campus or showing a controversial film.”

Diana Coryat has worked as a documentary filmmaker, media educator, television producer, and youth development consultant. Fourteen years ago she co-founded the Global Action Project (GAP), which teaches video production to New York City teens. Coryat is currently completing a master’s thesis exploring the contributions of youth media to critical pedagogy. (“Just as youth media is ghettoized in the media world,” she says, “it is often ghettoized in cultural media studies.”)

Youth Media Reporter has been running a series of articles exploring partnerships between youth media and professional outlets. In this interview, Coryat warns of the drawbacks to these arrangements.

What are GAP’s main goals?

One is for young people to use media for creative expression and as an exploration of their identities and their communities and the world. That includes using their media as a social action tool to bring change in the world. The other piece is to bring young people’s voices and perspectives into the public sphere and the media, which are areas where they’re sorely lacking.

How important is it for GAP to work with professional media outlets?

Although one of GAP’s visions is for young people’s media and stories and perspectives to be in the mainstream media, it’s definitely not our top priority. We’re more looking for the young people to be empowered by the process, such as working with peers and investigating an issue. And what we value most in the process is face-to-face contact. We want the media to be a springboard for dialogue, so our priority is to screen work in venues where there is a possibility for dialogue, like at community centers or schools.

We regularly have our work on Free Speech TV and Manhattan Neighborhood Network and I think it’s great, but you often get less feedback about the work when it airs on TV than when the teens meet with an audience. People watching television usually don’t talk about what they are viewing. We’re trying to get young people standing up in front of an audience and talking about the issues they’re working on and their work as artists. We find that the impact is greater for them personally when they meet their audience, and the impact for the audience is also greater.

When young people work with mainstream outlets, it can limit their creativity.

Also, when young people work with mainstream outlets, it can limit their own creativity. Usually there’s a format the mainstream outlet wants a young person’s media to conform to. They might say, “We can take a two-minute video and it has to look this particular way.” I’ve heard of work where a mainstream outlet has commissioned a piece to be produced by a youth, but ultimately the adult producers are the ones with the vision. When it’s completed they might say, “Oh, wow, this is youth produced,” even though they’ve manipulated every part of it.

We think there are times when a young person can learn from working with an outlet’s requirements and vision. At an advanced stage working with professionals can be really important. We have internships for our more advanced students at different production companies, and they definitely benefit from this. But our main goal is to train the young people we work with as artists and activists, to cultivate their own creative expression and voice. That is really important in terms of their growth.

How do you decide when to work with a professional outlet?

Mainstream outlets have contacted GAP, but what they often want from us is something that fits how they envision young people. For example, they often want material that “sells,” like stories about gangs or violence, or stories in which young people reveal their struggles with food or drug addictions. They’ve actually called us and said, “Do you have a young person we can highlight who was homeless and is now making videos?” They’re really trying to fit young people into their own stereotypes of teens. Our young people’s work often doesn’t fit with these programming interests, and we won’t work with people who see young people that way.

What’s the advantage of working with professional outlets?

The best thing is the recognition and visibility it gives us, and exposing audiences to young people’s perspective.

Any advice to other organizations considering working with media outlets?

It’s important to understand how the media is going to be used and to know that with a lot of outlets you do not have the final say over how it turns out. So find out ahead of time how much editorial control you will have, if any. And remember, it takes a lot of time to work with media outlets and you still have an obligation to the young people you’re working with to help develop their skills and talents, as well as their confidence in themselves.

Above left: Diana Coryat (right) with GAP co-founder Susan Siegel.

Continue reading Counterpoint: On Media Partnerships

Exemplary teaching and youth work are mutually inclusive, and both need venues for recognition, says the executive director of the Forum for Youth Investment in a Youth Today column.