Youth News Teams

About Youth News Team

Youth News Team is a unique student reporting program hosted by PSTV (the Philadelphia School District’s education channel) and WHYY with partners including The Philadelphia 2016 Host Committee for the Democratic National Convention, KYW Newsradio, and the Rendell Center for Civics and Civic Engagement. The program is intended to provide Philadelphia students a unique opportunity to cover the 2016 Democratic Convention, the issues that affect their neighborhoods and how those issues relate to national political debate.

This program is funded by The Philadelphia Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation through a grant to WHYY. The program will build journalism skills among participating students and leave a legacy of additional media creation capacity at schools by granting camera equipment to participating programs following the Convention. To provide mentorship, student teams have been matched with local media partners including NBC10, Philadelphia Magazine, KYW and WHYY to provide professional perspective and feedback and consider publication of students’ Convention stories.

Five student teams (four composed of five high school students each and one composed of 5 middle school students) were selected from an overall pool of 17 high school team applications and 41 middle school individual applications. Learn more about the student reporters here.

Student teams will participate in a two-week program. The first week will be a journalism boot camp, during which students will learn about how to report and develop stories. The second week – during the Convention itself (July 25-28, 2016) – will be devoted to actual reporting. Each Youth News Team will be provided with access to Convention-related activities and programs, such as various caucus meetings and events.

We hope that the team coverage will provide a youth perspective on the activities surrounding the Democratic National Convention and the issues that students are passionate about. Their original essays can be found here.

Questions on the program can be directed to Michael Greenle via Michael.greenle@gmail.com or pstv@philasd.org

ADD LOGO