The successful Youth Radio venture balances young producers’ insights and new ideas about content with the professionalism and knowledge of the adults they work with.
The aim of this innovative project is to promote young people's intellectual, creative, and professional growth through training and access to media. “Youth Radio’s media education, broadcast journalism, technical training and production activities provide unique opportunities in social, professional, and leadership development for youth, ages 14-24.” (Youth Radio Mission, 2010)
Building Community Capacity Through Youth Radio
Project workers have demonstrated that by providing unique developmental opportunities essential attributes for successful transition to adulthood, employment opportunities and effective citizenship have been encouraged.
Young people
- are encouraged to develop competencies in media literacy, journalism, technology and production
- are given opportunities to gain knowledge of professional expectations and appropriate workplace behavior
- through these advantages, are able to access knowledge related to educational and career opportunities
Youth Radio professes that their goal is to “instill a long-term commitment and engagement on the part of youth as viable contributors and leaders in the media/arts, journalism and civic life.”
How Youth Radio Works
Everything about this multi media program for youth is supplied free of charge. There are programs services such as
- professional development
- media education
- technical training
- academic support
- health services
By providing these services Youth radio has been able to help youth by strengthening life-skills, as well as motivating students to go on to graduate from high school and to develop higher education goals.
Youth Career Prospects Enhanced by Innovative Radio Project
Youth Radio is not only a wonderful community resource, which is obviously popular and valued, but it has been able to prepare participants for the new types of careers in the 21st century within the ever changing field of multimedia.
Youth Radio trains young people to become journalists and to produce content for a variety of audiences, in formats including newspapers, TV, radio and the Web.
How is Youth Radio Different?
Young people are the voice and they are the writers, producers and columnists of what is loosely called Youth Radio. The results have been worthwhile, and the venture has lasted over 10 years.
Adults who worked with youth to produce the shows that have been so successful, did so by really listening to what the young people believed would be successful.
When young producers insisted music should play for an entire two-hour show, as a continuous sound under the features, interviews and even the call-ins, the mentors complied. This was even though they thought the background track would be distracting. The young people knew what they were talking about and the public affairs show lasted three years on commercial radio.
Fresh Youth Ideas Plus Experience of Age
Since the invention of MTV, which began some 20 years ago, young people have seen themselves as having the ability to choose from an ever-expanding array of media content. Attuned to this way of thinking about producing for multi media, young writers and producers act as the voice of their generation. Given creative license and encouraged by the faith their mentors show in them, they identify stories and produce them in their own way.
In 2002, record youth homicide rates in Oakland, where many of the Youth Radio students live and where one of their students was shot and killed and others had relatives lost in the madness, one of Youth Radio adult producers, Lissa Soep, added the element of poetry to the production.
A poem was written by a 19-year-old, which told the story of Ice Life. This was a modern day Romeo and Juliet drama, which described being caught in the cycle of poverty and violence that "so often leads to incarceration and death." Ellin O’Leary, (Nieman Reports. 2003)
The poem inspired an empowering sound collage where a perspective of youth escaping from the cycle of violence by keeping a pathway to education and a career was produced. Not only was the soundscape a hit locally with both adult and youth audiences, it also was broadcast on National Public Radio. The piece called “Oakland Violence” won first prize 2003 National Black Journalists Awards and was honored at the Third Coast Festival.
Project Collaboration and Authentic Voice
Youth Radio’s success with mainstream media has been achieved by balancing young producers’ insights and new ideas about content with the professionalism and knowledge of their adult counterparts. This takes places within the context of an innovative editorial process.
Because today’s very competitive media markets require rigorous standards, youth who collaborate with their mentors understand that they must aspire to high produce excellence. The programs are written by and about youth must be better than first-rate to compete in this arena. Because of their ability to produce journalistic quality and cutting-edge youth style, Youth Radio has received assignments from major news organizations including National Public Radio, the San Francisco Chronicle’s opinion section, Public Radio International, Marketplace and CNN.com.
The presentations may run from one minute to two hours offering “diverse voices to the largest and most diverse audiences possible.” They programs consist of music, commentary and features as well as talk shows, which may appear on radio (public and commercial), but also through the Web, TV and in print.
Rebecca Martin, Youth Radio’s senior producer, said in an interview with Ellin O’Leary, that audiences respond to the Youth Radio programs because of “the unique sensibility that young people bring to their reporting, giving audiences access to perspectives, truths and trends that adult reporters just can’t reach.” (Nieman reports. 2003.)
It is the collaboration between the young and older producers that brings excitement and authenticity to the work produced by Youth Radio. This project is about collaboration and a commitment to training the next generation, who reflect a diversity of economic and ethnic backgrounds.
Resources:
- Chavez,V & Soep,E. Youth Radio Youth Radio and the Pedagogy of Collegiality,
- Harvard Educational Review, 2005
- O'Leary,E. Mixing Young and Old to Create a New Approach. (Nieman reports. 2003.)
- Soep,E. Phi Delta Kappan. Critique: Where Art Meets Assessment,Vol. 87, No.01, September 2005, pp.38-40, 58-63.
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