avatarEric Ortiz

Summarize

The Journalism Revolution Will Be Led With Youth

Partnering with schools, as early as preschool, can help local news organizations reach the next generation. (Ella Baker School)

The other day, I was picking up some breakfast treats at Wuollet Bakery for a “Let’s Connect” event for the Southwest Connector, a local newspaper in Minneapolis.

Let’s Connect is a community speakers series I lead that celebrates great local people in Minneapolis doing great things. Shoutout to Wuollet for donating the donuts. Shoutout to artist/entrepreneur/educator Mark Rivard, the founder of Do Rad Things, for being our guest and having a great conversation.

As I was leaving Wuollet’s and walking to my car, a grandfather walked in front of me with two of his grandkids, a boy and a girl. The boy was about 4 or 5. The girl was 7 or 8.

The girl ran in front of everyone in the parking lot.

“Did you look before you ran?” the grandpa said to his granddaughter.

“For what?” she said.

“For traffic.”

Kids need guidance from adults. Always have, always will.

The first five years of a child’s life are the most important for their health and development, especially their brains. Their brains develop faster in their early years than at any other time. In 2021, Molly Wright, a 7-year-old student from Queensland, Australia, gave a passionate TED Talk on childhood development.

This TED Talk was produced in collaboration with the Minderoo Foundation as an educational tool for parents and caregivers around the world and was supported by UNICEF.

Molly talked about why kids need help from adults. The healthy development of young people depends on five things:

✅ Connecting

✅ Talking

✅ Playing

✅ A healthy home

✅ Community

All of this helps develop the brain so kids can reach their full potential. Adults can make a difference. As Molly explained, scientists call it “serve and return.” That’s another way of saying, “connect, talk, and play.”

In other words, pay attention. Games and interactions with little ones build imagination and empathy, vocabulary and attention, memory and trust.

Every time an adult talks to a child, plays with them, and makes them laugh, they grow. Every interaction builds and strengthens their relationships and mental health.

In other words, inform and engage. Sound familiar?

Informing and engaging is the role of journalism. But many people today feel disconnected from journalism.

All human beings, like all kids, are hardwired for connection. When the connection is taken away, when we ignore people, people can feel disconnected. This causes confusion and stress. It’s hard for people to feel calm and feel safe and trust anyone. This can have a lifelong impact.

This is how many people feel about news organizations today.

Dan Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted a study a few years ago. Over 2,500 people were offered free subscriptions to local newspapers in Pennsylvania. Only 44 people, less than 2 percent, accepted. As the Columbia Journalism Review reported, they gave local news away for free. And almost no one wanted it.

The academic study will be published this year in the American Journal of Political Science. This study should be a wake-up call for everyone who wants to make journalism better for communities. What’s being done isn’t working. What’s being done is not connecting. Local news needs to be useful, relevant, and engaging. Local news needs to create more community connections.

The outlets that were part of the study, it should be noted, were mainstream, legacy newspapers. What would the results look like for other types of organizations?

What if news organizations approached community engagement the way parents and caregivers need to approach engagement with kids?

What if news organizations were part of that early engagement? Could news organizations engage with kids in the first five years and start building connections, talking to them, playing with them, helping support a healthy home environment, and building a strong community?

Just as kids need adults to serve and return, communities need the news industry to start doing more serving and returning.

We can do this by developing partnerships with schools. Early and often.

Imagine how impactful this would be. Not only will it help kids develop. It could help them learn to read. It could help them develop news literacy. It could help them learn about journalism and trust journalism.

This is how the journalism industry can rebuild trust in journalism and transform journalism.

We talk a lot about emerging audiences in local news today. How do we engage younger readers? How do we get the next generation of readers?

We need to go back to school. And we need to start in preschool.

This story was first published in The Community Builder on LinkedIn.

Journalism
Local News
Education
Youth
Community
Recommended from ReadMedium