Being the Media

by Onelia Hawa

Ryan Perry

Early in the summer on the 13th floor of Capital Towers, 20 high-school students gathered in a space that overlooked the city skyline for a pizza social to learn more about an intensive, hands-on summer project that teaches reporting, podcast and videography skills to teenagers from the Jackson metro area. Students ate pizza with friends and relatives who came in to support them, and waited anxiously to hear what the next two months would mean for them.


The Mississippi Youth Media Project brings young people, age 14 to 19, together to learn how to report on their community and tell their own stories, with a focus on juvenile justice. Supported in part by the Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance (kfla.org), the project's nonprofit fiscal agent, YMP is a volunteer project of Donna Ladd—BOOM editor-in-chief—and four other Kellogg fellows.

Zeakyy Harrington

YMP's mission is to teach young people to produce powerful stories that reach a larger audience and how to build equity principles into their community's media narrative, while teaching them professional skills.


Here are some words from students themselves:

Kelsee Ford

​"I wanted to do something this summer, so I jumped at the opportunity," says Jennifer Shields, 16, a YMP podcaster and senior at Clinton High School who plans to attend Mississippi State University for either microbiology or medical technology. "This program gave me confidence in my writing, taught me to be more outgoing, and I also learned how youth can be journalists."


"I don't usually do things during the summer, but my mom told me about this program," says Kelsee Ford, 16, a videographer and junior at Murrah High School who plans to continue her career in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps and move up to ROTC. "I learned to conduct a podcast and a little about web design. I learned that people might give up on you, but show them you can do it."

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Jennifer Shields

​"[W]hen you learn that there's more to (a) place than brimstone and bullets, you're surprised; when you learn that maybe things are dangerous because people have human problems and need help, maybe you're a little shocked," says Ryan Perry, 18, a senior at Northwest Rankin High School who plans to attend the University of Mississippi and study psychology. "That was, and is, my relationship with the Washington Addition. I was entirely ignorant of its existence until this summer when I joined the Mississippi Youth Media Project."


"I felt good about how the program explained the ins and outs of journalism," says Z'eani Furdge, 16, a YMP podcaster and a homeschooled junior from Newton, Miss., who plans to go to college and major in technology. "One lesson that I learned is that the real world is no joke."

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Z'eani Furdge

​"I joined YMP to better my photography skills," says Zeakyy Harrington, 17, a YMP student actively pursuing a music career. He plans to challenge people's perspectives of young adults like him from the Washington Addition and better the lives of people in his community. "Kai Smith (a violence and gang expert, and former felon, from New York City see graafics.org) was my favorite speaker because he comes from a similar environment to mine. ... He understands the violence of youth and media."


After two months of intensive reporting, interviewing, cold-calling and jumping to the beat of breaking stories and protests, students published their work at jxnpulse.com. The site includes enterprise stories with solutions to the school-to-prison pipeline and opinion pieces on race, education and Pokemon.

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