Shelf Life: The Kids in the Newsroom

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The young documentarians are students with Radio Rootz, a People’s Production House program that trains youth in media literacy and radio journalism—research, interviewing, fact checking, and the whole unglamorous shebang. Documentaries like Freedom vs. Safety (School Security) play on public radio stations across the country and are shared through Generation PRX, an online youth radio network. I can’t speak for past years, but this year’s works are inspired: Rootz students deliver solid, serious journalism about the dangers of My-Space, the challenges of being a young African American fencer, and the ups and downs of New York’s new small-schools initiative while maintaining the refreshing enthusiasm and vernacular of teenagehood.

This earnest but playful spirit also motivates projects like America’s Next Top Immigrant, a satiric film produced by immigrant and refugee students at Global Action Project (GAP), a nonprofit that runs video-journalism programs for young people of color and GLBT youth in New York. In the film, seven immigrant contestants compete to achieve the American Dream. “It’s very dramatic and hilarious,” says GAP outreach director Binh Ly, “and it gets at some of the core issues of systematic inequality in our country.”

Last summer, GAP youth created Unsockumented, a six-and-a-half-minute dark comedy starring an ethnically diverse crew of sock-puppet students who discuss the economic pressures faced by undocumented young people and the exploitation they are likely to encounter when they enter low-skills jobs after high school. GAP shared the video with organizations lobbying for the DREAM Act, proposed federal legislation that would have allowed qualified undocumented students access to higher-education benefits (it ultimately failed to pass). “You have to believe that the media they produce could have great potential,” Ly says, “beyond just having them raise their voice and learn media skills.”

Youth Rights Media in New Haven, Connecticut, Baltimore-based Wide Angle Youth Media, the Bay Area Video Coalition, Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s Youth Channel, and Beyondmedia Education in Chicago also work with young people to produce excellent, justice-oriented video and television documentaries.

The Written Word Hangs On

Good old-fashioned written work hasn’t gone completely out of style. Politics is a major theme for YO! Youth Outlook, a program of New America Media, which has a dedicated young-adult audience online and is set to relaunch its print edition this fall. This year, YO! has focused on the election and immigration beats, though arts and education reporting frequently pop up as well. The program works with a lot of recently incarcerated youth, says YO! publisher Kevin Weston, and even pays its reporters, which is a rarity in the field. “Their work is valuable,” he says, “and we want to be able to teach that and model that to them.”

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