Prizes honor media youth actions
on disinformation, gun violence
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
20 NOVEMBER 2019
PARIS -- A British not-for-profit promoting media literacy by first having students do journalism and a team of American teenagers reporting on the young victims of gun violence were honoured today as top laureates of the 2019 Global Youth & News Media Prize. The awards spotlight outstanding efforts to strengthen engagement between news outlets and youth.
The Student View, which in three years has grown from a club in one South London school to 82 student newsrooms all over the United Kingdom, won the top prize in the News/Media Literacy Award category. Founded by a 22-year-old British teacher, The Student View aims to fight disinformation by training students as reporters in partnership with Financial Times journalists and also having them follow a 12-part media literacy course. The Student View now advises similar efforts in Mongolia and Bulgaria.
The top prize in the Journalism Award category went to Since Parkland, a project involving more than 200 teenage journalists who told the stories of 1,200 teenagers and children killed by guns in the United States during the year after 17 students and staff were killed in a mass school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February 2018.
The Since Parkland project is supported by several media organizations. The Trace newsroom worked with journalism teachers to coach student journalists as they wrote portraits of the young victims (under age 19 ). The Miami Herald and McClatchy Newspapers documented patterns in child gun deaths and what might reduce them. NowThisNews was Since Parkland’s social video partner. In November 2019, The Trace released the second phase of the project: The Hardest Stories to Tell, completing the stories of victims who had not yet been fully profiled.
The top winners received their prizes today at the NewsXchange, the premier global conference of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for news executives worldwide. French journalist Mariane Pearl, who was a member of the prize jury, presented those awards along with Savannah Jenkins, representing News-Decoder, a partner for the prize. The European Journalism Centre and the Google News Initiative also support the global awards.
Six other organizations have also been honoured. The Children's Radio Network (South Africa) youth reports on HIV/AIDS and LGBTI issues and the rapidly growing, youth-staffed and Facebook-based Quds News Network (Palestine) received silver awards for journalism, with DR, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, receiving a special commendation for its News Network, where young people create news in collaboration with young journalists.
In the news/media literacy category, silver awards went to the virtual news literacy classroom Checkology (USA) and to the investigative journalism student reality show Top Story (Kenya) with a special commendation going to YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company, for its Troll Factory game.
In May, at the Eurasian Media Forum in Kazakhstan, the Global Youth & News Media Prize presented its Planet Award to El Surtidor, a Paraguayan digital media group, for path-breaking reporting that reinforced youth participating in efforts to save a huge forest in South America.
The prize began in 2018 with a joint honorary award to The Guardian US and Eagle Eye student journalists, survivors of the killings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, for their joint news coverage of the March for Our LIves national demonstration in favour of gun control.
Details about all the 2019 laureates can be found at http://www.globalyouthandnewsmediaprize.net
For further information, contact one of the Prize directors:
Aralynn McMane, aralynn@youthandnewsmedia.net, +336-10123006
Jo Weir, jo@youthandnewsmedia.net, +44 (0) 7990 565872