EMFA: T3E5 - Student Press - Becklund

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Theme: Networking Communities - Essay 5
Author: Laurie Becklund, Los Angeles-based journalist
E-mail: judyrat@earthlink.net


Real Stories - Associated Student Press

        What models for sustained content development and 
interaction are emerging, you ask? 

        Let me describe one, but first the reasons for it.

        I am concerned that most of us bemoan, but accept as 
almost inevitable, a digital divide that may last a decade -- 
more if new wedge technologies emerge to extend it.

        While we wire, wouldn't it be helpful to define what 
sorts of information that travels over the Net is critical? And 
to figure out if there are alternative ways to inform those to 
need it until then?

        I am a former Los Angeles Times staff writer and (during 
OJ) CBS News producer who tends to look at information 
pragmatically. For years, I've had advocates call me up to "get 
word out" about, for example, campaigns to help kids, 
immigrants, human rights victims. I care about those issues and 
wrote about many of them. But, I turned down others because they 
weren't newsworthy on a national level. Yet, on the community 
level at discussion here, they were critical. Moreover, the 
people who would have benefited most directly from them didn't 
read The Times or watch Dan Rather. Many didn't even speak 
English.

        After the OJ Trial ended, I took the Nestea Plunge into 
volunteer work and helped a friend who started the NetDay 
movement by doing a news site helping volunteers wiring schools. 
I cared about wiring schools, but I cared more about relieving 
children's dependence on the motivation level of adults around 
them.

        The challenge as I saw it was this: how could we get 
customized, needed, news out to local (school) communities on 
air or on paper. Then it hit me: the largest network of 
community newspapers in the country is school newspapers. As 
early adopters even in poor schools (where newspapers still 
exist), students are in a pivotal position to take information 
in over the Internet, then turn around and publish it on paper 
or on air. Moreover, they instinctively know their readers and 
can tailor information to their needs.

         Yet, these kids operate in near isolation, often with 
advisers whose first love is coaching football. In California, 
Delaine Easton, the Supt. of Schools last year MAILED to every 
principal an application notifying them they could qualify for 
50% technology discounts. Yet, the last I checked, fewer than 
half had returned them. If a kid had done a story about that in 
a paper, wouldn't SOMEONE have asked about it? In one 
demonstration project I did, kids were able to interview Reed 
Hundt at least letting them know schools/districts were going to 
have to apply in order to get discounts.

        Now, nearly a year of organizing, programming, and 
networking later, we're preparing to start up the Associated 
Student Press, which will create the first national databank of 
student journalism, allow kids to read and reprint each other's 
work, collaborate on national projects, attend "virtual press 
conferences" -- all via simple Internet connections.

        Lots of people and institutions are now coming forward, 
but we still have many needs to finish development over this 
summer when kids and advisers are out. Once we're up, expect 
kids to start defining issues and, I suspect, doing something 
about them. Critical thinking skills, literacy, technological 
fluency -- all these are skills that must be used in this 
project -- not only to inform communities -- but to create a 
diverse 21st century press corps that just might report the OJ 
Trial a little differently.

        For details, check http://www.schoolwire.org/asp.htm.    
Would love your responses and participation.        
        
Laurie Becklund
SchoolWire & Judy's Rat
213-856-4223
888-213-NEWS




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