When students report the news
A new network calls attention to the academic and civic benefits of student journalism
I’m excited this week to publish an interview with journalist Amanda Little. She’s the author of The Fate of Food and a writer-in-residence in the English department and the Communication of Science, Environment and Technology department at Vanderbilt University. I know her as the founder of Kidizenship, a civics organization for young people that I played a small role in helping her launch back in 2020, sharing what I knew about the civics education revival from working on my book, Building Better Citizens.
Kidizenship has since expanded into a network for high school and college student journalists and a syndicated publication of their work. In this interview, we talk about the perhaps unrealized value of teaching students how to report the news at school, and why so many schools face barriers to teaching it. Student journalism offers skills supported by the science of learning, including gaining background knowledge, learning how to synthesize it and write in a succinct way. Amanda also sees it as “lived civics,” and we get into why that is, and why more students should have access to school journalism programs.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The Bell Ringer: Tell readers about Kidizenship and why you created it.
Amanda Little: Kidizenship is a media platform for kids interested in civics and politics. We started out as a series of creative civic contests in late 2020. The contests invited kids to design their own American flags, write superhero stories, compose and perform their own national anthems, and their own presidential speeches and documents. That evolved into the nation's first nonpartisan national student newspaper, which we call Watch Us Rise. Essentially we ended up seeing this enormous opportunity to engage young people in the act of modernizing and reimagining what civics education is and can be.
I’m a professor of journalism for undergrads, and was really interested in this notion that journalism is a form of lived civics—that the skills of journalists like engaging in community, curiosity and listening closely to people, considering a range of perspectives and fact-checking rigorously—all those skills are foundations of engaged citizenship. How can we invite young people to write themselves into the story of democracy? How can we cultivate interest in civics among a generation that happens to be very sophisticated at content creation? I'm interested in how we can help protect and transform democracies through student journalism and content creation. And that's what Kidizenship is.
The Bell Ringer: Is the Students United News Network something separate? Or is it together with Kidizenship?
Amanda Little: It is together with Kidizenship—our umbrella organization. We started syndicating content from student newspapers, high school and undergraduate newspapers, to publish alongside civic content. And we just kept finding more and more amazing student journalism, kids making sense of the political and civic landscape for their own newsrooms and their own high schools.
In the last couple of months, we launched SUNN, the Students United News Network. It’s a collective of some of the strongest high school and college newsrooms that are producing really exciting student reporting, opinion writing and even graphics. Some are doing amazing broadcast news journalism.
We started with a coalition of 100 high schools and 30 colleges in 42 states, and those schools and publications represent thousands of students. We want to grow this to hundreds and ultimately thousands of schools nationwide in all 50 states.
We have standards for accuracy and integrity, and an index of local and national organizations that support student journalism. We have tips on writing and reporting and lessons for journalists. We're developing a discussion board where student editors and writers and faculty advisors can share their best practices. And next year, we're going to launch a series of virtual conferences that connect students to each other, and to professional journalists and news media. We will offer a mentoring program between the high school journalists and college journalists, and even those in grad schools and grad journalism programs.
It's been astounding to me how undervalued and under-resourced high school journalism programs are. They really only exist in schools with a ton of resources. But even there, they're struggling. We undervalue this work, academically and even monetarily.
Every month we send out a prompt, and schools can pitch us. Three pieces per school can be considered for syndication. Students receive an honorarium of $50 per piece for syndication. Then there's a $75 honorarium per original piece, and for graphic illustrations. Everything we publish is by students, for students, and that's true of the written work and the graphic work.
The Bell Ringer: What is the state of student journalism now? Do you have numbers on how many high schools have student journalism programs, and papers and online news sites?
Amanda Little: We have been trying to find those numbers. There have been some—the Knight Foundation did an interesting study, there are some graduate programs that have seen an increase in enrollment in recent years. (Knight and Pew Research Center found, for example, that in a few states, as much as a quarter of reporters covering statehouses were from student newsrooms.) We have so many activated young people who are really interested in political and civic life, and in covering and writing about it.
But high school journalism programs have been suffering, especially through and post-pandemic. I don't have an absolute number, but I do know that at the high school level a lot of these programs have suffered in part because teachers are so overburdened. I've met with dozens of high school faculty advisors who run student newspapers or advise students. These programs live and die on the engagement of the faculty advisor. Even in the most robust student newspapers, the faculty advisor gets paid next to nothing to do this work. It's about $500 a semester, roughly—that’s anecdotal, but it’s this nominal fee to do very time-intensive work.
If we think about schools and universities as micro-democracies, then that student newspaper is that fourth estate. A first-year student at Stanford, for example, Theo Baker, did some digging and found the work of Stanford’s president had been manipulated. Baker's reporting then led further investigations by the Board of Trustees, who confirmed his reporting and the president had to resign. The UNC Daily Tar Heel has done really important reporting on the school shooting that happened on campus and student safety. The Daily Pennsylvanian at Penn and the Harvard Crimson have both been very aggressively covering free speech and student protests. These students get no academic credit, and the editors of these publications may get a small honorarium, but they don't get paid much at all. It's hard for students who are already trying to pay off loans, for example, to get involved in this. So there's a huge barrier to entry.
A lot of students say there's also a social barrier. Students say there's a stigma around being a student journalist. Those who see it as a form of public service are really motivated and excited by it, and see it as an important contribution to the community. But people censor themselves around them. And they feel that there's just no culture of acceptance—let alone appreciation—of the work.
The Bell Ringer: I didn't realize that.
Amanda Little: Any of these publications can't function without a dedicated faculty advisor, which is part of why we saw so many student newspapers suffer and dwindle during the pandemic. The faculty were themselves dealing with so many other demands. There are journalism courses in high school, but overwhelmingly students I've talked to, in both public and private schools, say they're really antiquated. They're not creative, they're not engaging. And there's no AP credit for journalism. They're treated as an extracurricular, so there's very little academic incentive for students to take it seriously. A number of the teachers I talked to, some of them felt like, ‘why don't we push for an AP journalism course?’ The student portfolios, the work that these students are publishing could be submitted for course credit. There are others who are really opposed to the AP system, who didn't love that idea.
But the question on everyone's mind is certainly: how do we shift that value system? This is exactly what we're trying to do.
The Bell Ringer: What are the students like who are interested in journalism? What are the topics that they're fired up about?
Amanda Little: That's a great question. So the size of the publication at a school varies really dramatically. A few student newsrooms we're working with are 90-plus students strong. This is at the height of the high school level. The Spectator at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, they have a really big staff. They have a fairly robust budget, I think they might even be independently funded, from maybe alumni—
The Bell Ringer: Like what the football team would be at another school!
Amanda Little: Exactly! And maybe even ad sales. It looks a lot like an undergraduate program.
I'm really interested in the pipeline that's created from high school programming into college programming. Even middle school newspapers are the pipeline to high school. There are great opportunities to improve curricula at the high school and middle school level that generates talent and interest in college, and then certainly into the news media landscape nationally.
Initially for me, this was an effort to address a blind spot in civics education, but it very quickly became an interest in addressing this other blind spot, the crisis in American news media, and this amazing lack of content for young readers. There's very little out there that is nonpartisan news media for kids, and none of it is by kids, which is an amazing oversight. This is the best storytelling generation of our time—I mean, these kids have been documenting the world around them since before they could talk!
I get fired up when I think about this double blind spot we have. It's no surprise that our kids are scoring—what, 22%?—proficiency in eighth grade civics. Less than a quarter of kids coming through the public school system in the US are proficient in civics, and I think it's 13% proficient in US history, based on national exams. And part of that is that we're not engaging them in these topics in ways that are effective and exciting. And we're not modernizing our curricula effectively.
Here are some examples that high school students have written for us in recent issues: Local Nashvillian Katie Rush at Hume-Fogg High School wrote an opinion piece, “How I got my state legislature to listen to me,” and she's been working on some local legislation that ultimately got passed. Karmiah Smith, in Houston, wrote, “My take on how to make US History exciting.”
We had a couple pieces on why Biden is losing youth voters, and what it will take to get them back, and a conservative high school student writing about how Trump can get the youth vote. We also have a lot of pieces on mental health as a civic action issue.
The Bell Ringer: I want to talk a little about the academic benefits of student journalism. One big understanding from the science of learning is that often students do not have enough background knowledge stored in their long-term memory to make sense of the world and think critically. That happens for a variety of reasons, but I was thinking about how student journalism is a way to gain knowledge about the world. You have to know stuff to be able to write about it, you have to investigate and talk to people and gain understanding. You have to get different perspectives. Being able to write is how you understand something—you have to synthesize all that information. It’s shocking to me that more journalism isn't incorporated into school.
So could you talk a little bit about connecting journalism, background knowledge, and strengthening democracy? I think I know how it strengthens academics. But how can we take it a step further—how does it strengthen democracy and civics?
Amanda Little: I don't have experience myself in curriculum development. I want to gain more experience, and work with curriculum experts and developers to teach the rudiments of journalism and the rudiments of civics, and explore that intersection.
I actually never formally learned journalism, I just learned it by doing it. Which is part of why I love teaching, because I basically just throw my students into the field and say, try it. Ask a lot of questions and listen, and listen more. Maybe you’ll do 17 interviews and only use two of them—but the process of asking questions and listening is where everything happens. You get this critical vantage point of humility.
You have to become the vessel for researching the topic you're writing about, then once you have some basic background research on your topic, you go out and start talking to people. There's this kind of fundamental posture of receptivity that's really important to journalism.
A talent that we can help kids cultivate is how to listen to people—how to ask questions, and really thoroughly consider a number of perspectives on the same topic.
When you're compiling these different perspectives, and thinking about why someone may have one opinion on your topic, and someone may have a differing opinion, and they may have different facts that they're bringing to that topic, you ferret out which facts are accurate. You become a truth seeker, and it’s almost a treasure hunt for truth, truth that you didn’t necessarily come into your topic knowing.
Journalism as a practice requires so many important skills that are foundations of citizenship. Skills that, to use your words, build better citizens.
The Bell Ringer: In order to write well, in order to get the idea across, you really have to synthesize all this information, you have to be able to weed out what's not important. That is such a valuable tool for high school students to learn how to do. Plus it has this civic benefit.
Amanda Little: It's not only how can journalism be taught more effectively in our schools and teach us about civics ed, or become a form for better understanding and honing writing skills and listening skills and reimagine and modernize civic education. But it's also—how could this help cultivate a more engaged youth voter base? Whatever your political persuasion is, how do we invite young people to feel like their voices are relevant?
That’s what the SUNN Network is for. There is no fee for joining, all that's required is that you submit content that you love. I know teachers are always asked to join this thing and that thing, and it's just like one more thing, but this is fundamentally about bringing value and opportunity to students. And building this culture of appreciation around this work and giving them opportunities to learn and connect with professionals in this space. We are here to add value and do so in a way that builds engagement, rather than puts extra pressure on teachers.
I'm going to forward this on to the journalism teacher at my school. Sounds like a great opportunity for students :)
I'm the author of more than a dozen books--but I began as a newspaper writer, the first woman in every job I had, working my way up to associate editor and editorial writer. I live in Bethesda, Maryland in a retirement facility, but am currently working on a new book series (published by MITeen Press, a consortium of MIT Press and Candlewick). If I can help emerging journalists I'd be happy to do so.