I feel this is one measure that could really lead young people to consider what it means to be a journalist. An Americorps program for news would not only help youth realize journalism is a public good but it would also, hopefully, lead them to be less complacent in a news media climate that desperately needs many of its conventions to be upended.
Young journalists are rightfully terrified of life without a job doing a craft they went to school to learn, school they will be paying massive student loans on for years. They play it safe and are all too willing to serve local news entities that inundate communities regularly with weather, crime, self-help, and sports segments irrelevant to whether we survive as an American society or not.
Far too many youth lack the will or fire to go out and do good muckraking journalism or just plain classic investigative reporting.
Youth come to colleges to do celebrity, fashion, and sports reporting. They want to do 600-word blog gossip and make money off what they think there is a market for. Their perceptions are usually affirmed as they are taught that political or social journalism has no advertising dollars to support it and so they must find another way to succeed.
I purchased the book after McChesney and Nichols were finished andstood there in the presence of titans who have presented the state of journalism to citizens hoping to compel them to act for well over a decade now.
I approached McChesney to get my book signed, introduced myself, and realized how happy I was that I had been slaving for the past months to organize a media reform summit with a prime focus on education for Columbia College Chicago. I actually didn't have to introduce myself; a fellow organizer was telling McChesney what I am doing on campus.
Nichols made sure I knew that I would have to keep coming back to students to tell them what needed to be done. And, McChesney, co-founder of Free Press, was impressed to know that I was putting together a media summit in Chicago that Free Press supported and that I had been trying to turn students on to media reform & justice issues.
I cannot leave out who else was in the room with me. Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were in the room along with premier labor writer David Moberg of In These Times. I was in the room with Jeanette Foreman who serves as a board member for the Prometheus Radio Project and Mitchell Szczepanczyk, lead organizer and defender of community and public media in Chicago.
I left the talk fired up and anxious to get more students to be as passionate as I am. I left ready to talk media consolidation, future of journalism, net neutrality, and other issues that need to be addressed as citizens rise up and bring about a necessary media revolution.
I left wishing that I could involve more young people in the struggles I have involved myself in and the development of projects that are exciting because of the reality that these projects might bring about something new and different. I am referring to my involvement in the formation of a coalition that will provide simple ways for young journalists, artist, media makers to connect with social activists, community development and grassroots organizations, media trainers, and educators as well as progressive, independent, community, and public media in Chicago.
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