2025: MFP’s Youth Media Project Students Earn National Recognition
Report for America held its second annual Student Journalism Awards ceremony on April 24. The national competition recognizes and celebrates the work of student journalists working with RFA corps members on their service projects. Mississippi Free Press’s Youth Media Project collected seven awards during the ceremony, the most of any service project led by RFA Corps members.
Mississippi Free Press Editor Donna Ladd, Photo Editor Imani Khayyam and Programming Coordinator Kiden Aloyse-Smith led the 2024 Youth Media Project. Mississippi Free Press reporters and RFA Corps members Torsheta Jackson and Illan Ireland served as mentors. The 2024 YMP summer newsroom focused on elections, including how the media can cover elections better and engage young voters. Their flipbook and stories can be viewed on jxnpulse.com.
The Youth Media Project brings metro area high school students to the Mississippi Free Press newsroom for six weeks each summer. The students learn journalism, photography and videography skills to produce print and video stories.
RFA Student Award Winners:
1st place Best Profile: Ferrari Sharespeare – March to Equality: Alyce Clarke’s Fight for Women’s Rights and Voting in Mississippi
1st place Best Feature Story: Paris Braggs, Caitlyn Russell, Jeremy Thomas and La’Ziyah Walker – ISSUE FOCUS: Redlining, Voting Suppression and Felony Voting Bans Not Just Relics of Past
2nd place for Best News Story: Laila Henderson – From Partisanship to Gridlock: Why Legislation Gets Stuck, Rejected
2nd place Best Op/Ed Piece: Kaitlyn Poole – Opinion | Trump Can Run With 34 Felonies, But Many Mississippians Cannot Vote on Nov. 5
2nd place Best Enterprise: Hannah Evans – The How and the Why: Education Is Key to Motivating Young People to Vote
3rd place Best Enterprise: McKenzie Mathews – ‘Tears of Joy and Pride’: Don’t Be Discouraged, #MakeVotingATrend
3rd place Best Photo: Taylor Brandon – Darlyn Bustillo, Daughter of an Immigrant and Future Immigration Lawyer
Mississippi Free Press Editor Donna Ladd, Photo Editor Imani Khayyam and Programming Coordinator Kiden Aloyse-Smith led the 2024 Youth Media Project. Mississippi Free Press reporters and RFA Corps members Torsheta Jackson and Illan Ireland served as mentors. The 2024 YMP summer newsroom focused on elections, including how the media can cover elections better and engage young voters. Their flipbook and stories can be viewed on jxnpulse.com.
The Youth Media Project brings metro area high school students to the Mississippi Free Press newsroom for six weeks each summer. The students learn journalism, photography and videography skills to produce print and video stories.
RFA Student Award Winners:
1st place Best Profile: Ferrari Sharespeare – March to Equality: Alyce Clarke’s Fight for Women’s Rights and Voting in Mississippi
1st place Best Feature Story: Paris Braggs, Caitlyn Russell, Jeremy Thomas and La’Ziyah Walker – ISSUE FOCUS: Redlining, Voting Suppression and Felony Voting Bans Not Just Relics of Past
2nd place for Best News Story: Laila Henderson – From Partisanship to Gridlock: Why Legislation Gets Stuck, Rejected
2nd place Best Op/Ed Piece: Kaitlyn Poole – Opinion | Trump Can Run With 34 Felonies, But Many Mississippians Cannot Vote on Nov. 5
2nd place Best Enterprise: Hannah Evans – The How and the Why: Education Is Key to Motivating Young People to Vote
3rd place Best Enterprise: McKenzie Mathews – ‘Tears of Joy and Pride’: Don’t Be Discouraged, #MakeVotingATrend
3rd place Best Photo: Taylor Brandon – Darlyn Bustillo, Daughter of an Immigrant and Future Immigration Lawyer
Oct. 27, 2017: YMP's Maisie Brown Gives TEDxWomen Talk
Maisie Brown attended the summer 2016 Youth Media Project, then gave a TEDxWomenJackson talk about it in October 2016. The Jim Hill High School student was 15 when she did this talk. She is also a student journalist in the summer 2017 YMP session.
YMP Student Wins 2017 Mississippi Scholastic
Gold Key Award for Column
YMP summer 2016 and 2017 student journalist August Harp of Murrah High School won a Mississippi Scholastic Writing Gold Key Award for his powerful column that first appeared on YMP's student journalism site, jxnpulse.com. In "Ego and the Fear of Losing," he wrote about the equity differences between his his soccer teams, one at his majority-black high school and the other a more privileged and whiter team with far more resources. He wrote:
"To truly grasp the differences between them, you must first understand these simple facts. Murrah has 1,600 students: 93.52 percent of the school is African American, and 5.30 percent are white students. Fifteen of the 18 players on my select team are white, while I am one of two white boys on the Murrah soccer team, which consists of 22 players. Many of my select teammates attend private schools and could afford La Bernardin every meal, while most of my high school teammates cannot afford school lunch."
"To truly grasp the differences between them, you must first understand these simple facts. Murrah has 1,600 students: 93.52 percent of the school is African American, and 5.30 percent are white students. Fifteen of the 18 players on my select team are white, while I am one of two white boys on the Murrah soccer team, which consists of 22 players. Many of my select teammates attend private schools and could afford La Bernardin every meal, while most of my high school teammates cannot afford school lunch."
April 17, 2017: Jackson Youth Mayoral Forum
All three network newscasts in Jackson, Miss., covered the Youth Media Project's Youth Mayoral Forum held on April 17, 2017, in collaboration with the Jackson Council PTA's student ambassadors. YMP student Maisie Brown, 15, moderated the forum, and two students from the summer 16 session and two Spring 2017 Wingfield students comprised the on-stage media panel. The Clarion-Ledger featured the forum on its front page the next day, and the Jackson Free Press ran a story as well.
|
And WLBT:
|
YMP students made the cover of The Clarion-Ledger
the following day: 
|
April 9, 2017: YMP Student Doc Wins Film Festival Award
In summer 2016, a team of YMP students directed, shot and edited a short documentary on the effect HB 1523 on young people in the state. They later submitted it to the Crossroads Film Festival, where it screened in April 2017, winning a Lagniappe Award. Two students, Maggie Jefferis and Kelsee Ford, were invited to be part of the Women's Filmmaker Panel at the festival.
