AN EPILOGUE

(maybe to be CONTINUED)

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The World Teenage Reporting Project > COVID-19 has concentrated on stories by teenage reporters from around the world that cover what they and their cohorts have been doing make a difference during the Coronavirus pandemic. 

 

This project came at a unique time and offered an equally unique opportunity to fill a clear gap in the worldwide coverage of the pandemic by encouraging teenage journalists to submit those stories.

 

The content that emerged held the key characteristic of solutions journalism in its focus on how people were responding proactively to societal problems. It also helped combat the prevailing image of teenagers as anything but proactive problem solvers.

 

THE WHY

Early on, teenagers had been generally portrayed either as careless beach frolickers who brought the virus home or as bored, whiny couch-sitters capable of recounting only how awful their lives had become. Later, some coverage became more sympathetic, especially around missed graduation ceremonies and proms, but the image remained mainly of the teenager as mostly a powerless victim, rarely even as a protagonist, and much less as an effective helper.

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Even in stories by adults that did highlight teenage accomplishments, some writers could not resist the temptation to set up a false comparison with the “usual” kid who normally was seen as concentrating more on the mundane or frivolous: “Most ninth-grade girls worry about schoolwork, friends and crushes...” (CNN),  “While his friends are worrying about whether the prom will be cancelled...” (New Yorker), etc.

 

Most reporters would be horrified to even ponder taking such an approach in a story about a woman or a person of a specific ethnicity, but it was done with little hesitation for this group. [But credit went to where it was due in the national collections of mainstream media coverage about teenage accomplishments in this third showcase.]

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THE RESPONSE

The response in April to the offer to join a World Teenage Reporting Project > COVID-19 was rapid and gratifying, though far from representative of the entire world. In all, 31 student- and adult-run news entities in 19 countries signed up with only a couple failing to produce content.  The people who mobilized were nothing less than awesome, both the teenage journalists and those adults who helped them. They all put up with an onslaught of instructions, tight deadlines, requests for more information and unsolicited “helpful suggestions.” They understood immediately, as did News Decoder, the main media partner for the project, why we were all doing this: to fill an important gap in the coverage,

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Both advisors and the teenage journalists themselves reported benefits, sometimes to their own mental health.  [You can read the comments of some of those participants HERE.] I have organized other international journalistic experiences (a My Dream Interview Festival, The World Teeange News Takeover), but I must say that this was the most satisfying of such efforts, partly because of that same feeling of being able to do something in a time of general helplessness.

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WHY A HIATUS, WHAT'S NEXT (and not)

Even as the project wound down in early June, potential new participating organizations were expressing interest in contributing to the effort. But it’s time at least to pause. Audiences are becoming weary of COVID-19 coverage in general, a trend documented most recently in the UK by the Reuters Institute at Oxford,  and most of the world is entering a time of vacation and (at least initial) deconfinement and reopening.

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Now, I want to see some of these stories put to work in the creation of a permanent classroom resource, authentic content that will truly resonate with students, though I am not sure yet how to make that happen. 

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Otherwise this is a hiatus, yes, but it is not a finish. While it is likely, though not inevitable, that COVID-19 as a topic for such global reporting by teenagers may be ending, another topic may emerge that proves worthwhile for a similar effort. It will not be easy to find. One of the key components of the reporting this time was its truly unique specificity: a global event coupled with a clear opportunity for stories that contributed something new.  Without those elements, there is the risk of teenage reporters’ content disappearing as it simply feeds the maw of a topic's general

coverage.

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Let’s keep in touch.

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Dr. Aralynn Abare McMane

Global Youth & News Media, Bayonne, France

aralynn [at] youthandnewsmedia.net   aralynnmcmane [at] gmail.com