Newspapers Should Open Up to Kids

By: Shawn Moynihan Recently, I accepted the position of managing editor here at E&P. Just before that, I was fortunate to have the eye-opening experience of working as a substitute teacher in Collingswood, N.J., and in my hometown of Staten Island, N.Y. If I once thought that nurses, firemen and policemen should be the highest-paid professionals in this country, I'm now convinced that teachers should be added to this list.

While I was substitute teaching, I also realized how much kids still believe in newspapers -- and that now, more than ever, it is crucial for reporters and editors to make their presence felt in the classroom, and not just through Newspaper in Education (NIE) programs.

I'm no expert on the world of education, but once I stepped into the public school system, albeit briefly, I quickly discovered that a great many students are learning much less than we think they are. It was shocking.

Many of my days were largely spent trying to discipline students who were pleased to see someone other than their usual teacher at the front of the room -- and equally eager to make my life miserable, as I most certainly did to "subs" in my youth. But no matter how badly behaved or disaffected the students seemed, every time I mentioned that I had spent years as a writer and editor at the Staten Island Advance -- regarded as the daily newspaper by residents of the "forgotten borough" -- the chaos subsided and I had the class' attention, if only for a few minutes.

It was as though I had suddenly become cool, that because I was associated with "the paper," they grew interested. The things I had to say carried a new weight.

It was then that I realized how important, and powerful, newspapers are to kids. I had thought they had little regard for newspapers and anything that we had to say, particularly in this Internet and video game age. Attention spans are shorter than ever, making it increasingly hard for teachers -- and print journalists -- to reach youngsters.

It's not much of a stretch to believe that teens will always think of newspapers - despite current efforts to court younger readers -- as little more than a forum in which grown-ups regularly provide disinformation to each other and to young people, especially in light of the Jayson Blair scandal and other well-known episodes of journalistic wrongdoing.

But after the umpteenth episode of getting a wide-eyed look from kids when I told them I'd written for the Advance, I found out just how wrong that assumption might be. It became clear to me that newspapers have both a responsibility and an opportunity. We have a responsibility to improve education and awareness of current events by remaining dedicated to NIE programs. But we also have an opportunity to reach young people by showing them (at an impressionable age) not just what newspapers produce, but how they work.

In articles urging the press to reform policies and our public image in the wake of the Blair scandal, many former editors and media critics have advised newspapers to offer readers a clear view of how they operate -- to become "transparent," as the saying goes. In last week's E&P, for example, Bill Kovach advised that there was "only one way to fix" our current credibility problem: "be open, be transparent and explain all of the time what we do. We are in a world of interaction right now. I don't know why news organizations don't set up more mechanisms for the public to come into the organization."

Obviously, kids are not going to come to the newspapers -- so the newspapers must go to the kids.

It could pay off big. Contrary to our self-image, journalists (unlike teachers) are often viewed by kids as just one step removed from the pop-culture media they really love: rock and hip-hop music, movies, television. After all, we write about all those things, sometimes even meet a star or two, and that rubs off on us, positively.

Scheduling visits to schools would not be easily accomplished; everyone knows that resources are stretched thin at newspapers across the country. Some papers can barely afford to send a bunch of reporters out into the field at once, while holding others back to answer those nagging newsroom phones. It's far too easy for us to get caught up in the next deadline than it is to give this "transparency" idea some honest consideration.

But the potential benefits are real. If our youths grow up believing they can't trust reporters and editors to tell the truth and respect their audience, then where will readership go in the future? Taking time to reach out to young people and showing them, in person, that we're not all a bunch of grinning liars is an investment in our future as a medium.

Who knows -- given the opportunity, the kids just might learn something, too.