 “The number of newsrooms that are arms of one political faction or another is startling. These young people know it, and they don’t like it,” Kimberly Griffin writes. Photo by Imani Khayyam  Click here to read the 2024 Flipbook of the Student's Work by Kimberly Griffin
I’ll be honest: It’s been a rough few weeks. Let’s face it. It’s been a bumpy ride for most of us since 2020. What’s the saying? I’m tired of living in unprecedented times. I’m generally an optimist, more of a pragmatic optimist but an optimist all the same. That’s been tough this season. Before all the election turmoil, though, the Youth Media Project—one of the three newsrooms under our nonprofit, the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group umbrella (the Jackson Free Press is the third and isn’t active right now)—published some remarkable work. The YMP is a newsroom in the capital area run by teenagers that convenes each summer. It is typically focused on one issue, with this year’s young journalists deciding to focus on voting and elections. You can check out the YMP Flipbook here. Like much of the United States, many young journalists weren’t particularly interested in our recent election, not because of apathy but because we aren’t meeting them where they are. It’s easy for folks like me who live and breathe current events and politics to assume high school and college-aged folks are engaging with information in the same way, with access to the same algorithms or the same outstanding civic education I had from my public school. The fact isn’t that they are apathetic. They do care, as YMP revealed. As the introduction to the project said, “The students at YMP are trying to do what they can to change election coverage for young voters—and not just those who are voting this year. Even though most of the YMP students are not yet old enough to vote, they understand that the people who get elected have the power to make major changes in the daily lives of citizens. They also now fully realize how important it is to create a pipeline of future voters sooner than later and (that) even if they’re not old enough to vote yet, they may inspire their family members to turn out.” I saw U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor at the Mississippi Book Festival a few years ago. She said one of the most significant causes of division was the removal of civics from classrooms nationwide. Starting in middle school, I took a class that focused on government and how it worked. We had mock elections when I was at Chastain, and I remember the simple and catchy song that ran most of my childhood as part of the “School House Rock!” Saturday morning broadcast, which included the timeless “I’m Just a Bill” song. I still sing that little ditty today, albeit badly, to remind myself how legislation works. Media partisanship is another issue that rose to the top of YMP reporting. The number of newsrooms that are arms of one political faction or another is startling. These young people know it, and they don’t like it. “Lots of news that I read and watch is favoring one side over the other,” second-year YMP student mentor Laila Henderson said. “Many people are looking for the whole story to be told and without always being divided into two opposing sides, which helps readers and watchers make decisions on their own.” We want to tell the “whole story”—not only during an election session but also afterward when we consider the consequences of our choices. I encourage you to reach out to this incredible body of work from our YMP newsroom as they help us reimagine how to cover elections, promote civic engagement and give critical information to our team.
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