Project Topic: Youth/Children

Dropping Out: Why students leave Decatur schools, Decatur, IL 2001 

Partners:

Herald & Review
WILL-TV (PBS)
WILL-AM

“Dropping Out: Why students leave Decatur schools” was a civic journalism project that involved citizens, including those who’d never finished high school, in developing ideas to help keep students in school through graduation. 

In November 2001, the partners commissioned a survey of 102 adults who had dropped out of Decatur public schools in the previous 40 years. For many of the respondents, it was the first time they had ever been asked why they’d left. Their answers pointed to some concrete steps for retention programs. One-third said additional help from a teacher or administrator might have kept them in school. Another third said more interesting classes would have helped.

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SchoolNet, Philadelphia, PA 2001 

Partners:

Philadelphia Daily News, philly.com

At the height of a crisis in Philadelphia public schools, the paper launched a rich, online source of information to encourage parent involvement and public problem-solving. SchoolNet included a wide range of features. There was contact information for district offices to help parents navigate a sometimes-convoluted bureaucracy. There was a grade-by-grade breakdown of what children should be mastering in school each year and several online forums so parents could connect with each other. To ensure that any parent would have access to the site, the Daily News put detailed brochures in the free Internet access section of 55 city libraries.

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Teaching Tucson’s Children , Tucson, AZ 2001 

Partners:

The Arizona Daily Star
Tucson Citizen
KVOA-TV (NBC)
KOLD-TV (CBS)
KGUN-TV (ABC)
KUAT-TV (PBS)
KWBA-TV (WB)
KMSB-TV (Fox)
KTTU-TV (UPN)
KHRR-TV (Telemundo)
KUVE-TV (Univision)

This unusually comprehensive partnership – involving all of Tucson’s major media – joined forces for “Teaching Tucson’s Children,” a project on improving local public schools that culminated in a town hall meeting, Aug. 24, 2001, that drew 300 people in person and thousands more to their TV screens during the six rebroadcasts of the session. 

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TeenGo Web Site and On the Verge, Portland, ME 1999

Partners:

The Portland Press Herald

After the shootings at Columbine High School, the newspaper invited teenagers from around Maine to write about what high school life is like today. In April of 1999, 20 essays were published in the newspaper and more than 150 were posted on the “teengo” page of the Press Herald’s Web site. The page also launched an interactive forum so teens from all over Maine could chat online and created 20below.com, a Web site for teens. The site attracted visits from about half the teenagers in the state.

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Kids & Character 2000, Elmira, NY 1999

Partners:

Elmira Star-Gazette

The Sabre Radio Group

The Star-Gazette’s focus on teaching values to children turned out to be eerily prescient. Just weeks after its series on the subject ran, two teenagers opened fire on classmates and teachers at Columbine High School in Colorado. The event gave the Star-Gazette’s project an added intensity, prompting more area school districts, chambers of commerce and non-profit agencies to pick up the call for character education.

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Key Moments, Spokane, WA 1999

Partners:

The Spokesman-Review

A team of reporters and editors used (and helped refine) civic journalism “mapping” tools to chart the key moments in the lives of children that can make the difference between success and failure in adulthood. Building on its “City of Second Chances” project, which told the story of Spokane’s expanding ex-felon population and how prisons were not solving the problem of troubled people who are incarcerated, the newspaper wanted to answer the question: What would it take to change the lives of people who end up in prison? 

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The Death of Ryan Harris: A Community Responds, Chicago, IL 1999

Partners:

The Chicago Reporter

The newspaper revisited the 1998 slaying of 11-year-old Ryan Harris and its aftermath, finding it a critical point in police-community relations in Chicago’s crime-ridden Englewood neighborhood. Reporters reconstructed the police investigation of the crime, which led to the brief and controversial arrest of two young, neighborhood boys. (An adult was later charged with the murder.) They also analyzed nearly a decade of crime statistics and police calls in the neighborhood, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. 

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Keep Us Safe: Teens Talk about Violence, Rochester, NY 1996 

Partners: 

Rochester Democrat andChronicle
WXXI Public Television
WOKR-TV (ABC)

The partners focused on young people – their experiences, their views, their voices – for “Make Us Safe: Teens Talk about Violence.” First, they surveyed nearly 1,800 seventh through 12th graders in the Rochester area. They found that one-third thought their life would be shortened by violence, 18.5 percent carried a weapon for fear of violent crime and a significant number wanted their parents to set more limits. Then the partners gathered small groups of teenagers for focus group discussions.

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