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 to 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 this group of people were responding proactively to societal problems. It also helped combat the prevailing image of teenagers as anything but proactive problem solvers.

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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 prevalent image remained 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 reporting by adults that did highlight teenage accomplishments, some writers could not resist the temptation to set up a false comparison with the “usual” kid 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) and, about a 15-year-old, "Girls her age play Candy Crush or like watching cartoons..." (The Tribune, India). 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 is done repeatedly for this group. [But credit went to where it was due in the six national collections of mainstream media coverage about teenage accomplishments the group was able to do for in this third showcase.]

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THe WHO & WHAT

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. Together, they produced more than 50 stories in text, podcast and video. 

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The stories highlighted every kind of assistance a teenager could offer, including:

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• Providing, and even inventing, protective gear and innovative medical devices. 

• Making myriad special efforts to assure that neighbors, and especially elders, stayed safe. 

• Mobilizing in creative ways to raise funding for anti-virus efforts and to support of the needy.

• Redesigning their art, film-making, singing and even cooking to help.

• Serving themselves on the medical front line.

 

The people who mobilized to get those stories done 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.” Most of all, they understood immediately, as did News Decoder, the main media partner for the project,  that we were all doing this to tell stories people needed to know.

 

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 Teeage 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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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 new concerns and (at least initial) deconfinement and reopening.

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Now, I want to explore the possibility of putting these stories 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 finale. 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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Meanwhile, let’s do 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

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