Youth Reporters Make a Difference in Rural Michigan
Ben Harris of Marquette, Michigan, is only 11 years old. But he is already a veteran news reporter.
“It was a thrill the first time I had one of my stories published,” he says. “The first time I had one of my radio stories on the air I recorded it on a tape and listened to it over and over.”
How does a sixth grader from a small city get radio air time? He works at 8-18 Media, a program of the Upper Peninsula Children's Museum.
Giving Kids a Voice
The 8-18 Media program began in 1993. “We're really not a training ground for young journalists,” says Linda Remsburg, who runs the program. “We're looking more to give kids a voice in the world. That is our mission.”
Each year, 8-18 Media does just that for about 75 students between 8 and 18 years old. All of them live in and around Marquette. “We're in a rural area that's isolated,” Remsburg says. “There just aren't very many people up here.”
The students who volunteer at 8-18 Media work in one of two groups. Those who are 8 to 13 years old serve as reporters. They do interviews that are tape recorded and then written down. Those in the 14–18 age group work as editors. “The editors are the ones who put the stories together,” says Remsburg. Reporters and editors meet frequently and work together to help shape each story.
Helping Cover the Upper Peninsula
The stories for 8-18 Media appear on the program's website. They are also published in the Marquette Monthly magazine and on two local radio stations. Many big-city newspapers have a hard time reporting on events from the Upper Peninsula, and 8-18 Media helps them fill that gap. Its stories have run in the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune.
During the 2004 presidential election, 8-18 Media reporters and editors covered both the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Some of their stories appeared in major newspapers as well as the election website for Weekly Reader magazine.
Lauren Belpedio, 12, has served as a reporter since she was 9. She does not plan to be a journalist. But she says the program has shown her the problems that professional journalists face. “It's very hard work to write a piece and go over it and over it again to find all the little errors,” she says.
Finding Stories Others Might Ignore
The 8-18 Media program helps the Upper Peninsula by finding stories that might otherwise be ignored. Typical 8-18 Media stories are often features. They might focus on a local theater group's upcoming performance or a girl whose grandmother has Alzheimer's disease. Other stories deal with hard-hitting issues, such as illegal drug use in the Marquette area.
But Lauren says the program's biggest benefit is that kids get a chance to be heard. “Almost all the time adults are the ones reporting the news and giving their opinions,” she says. “But in this program, it's all about kids and what they think. It's a great place to be.”