PHILADELPHIA – The Philadelphia School District and Prime Movers of George Washington University launched today an exciting new national model to help restore student journalism to America’s schools by creating media clubs in 24 public high schools.
The program, called Prime Movers/Philadelphia, is the largest and quickest expansion of media clubs in the history of the Philadelphia School District. The funding for this new initiative came from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with an award $500,000 in grants to the School District and Prime Movers.
“This is an exciting new national model to help restore student journalism to America’s schools,” said Eric Newton, Knight Foundation’s vice president/Journalism Program. “We are very fortunate to partner with such distinguished journalists as Dorothy Gilliam and Acel Moore, who lead the effort in Philadelphia. The next generation of citizens can only defend our democracy if they can first understand it. Student journalism and First Amendment education are cornerstones of a good civics education, not an elective, but something we must demand from our schools.”
The Prime Movers/Philadelphia journalism program, which will be part of the high schools’ after-school offerings, will bring into the high schools professional journalists from Philadelphia newspaper, radio and television companies as well as Temple University journalism interns. They will assist in teaching journalism fundamentals and civic engagement and help students use those skills to tell stories of their schools and communities. In addition to the expansion of clubs, the school district will also develop a companion journalism course that will be available as an option for high schools to offer as an elective course.
The Philadelphia pilot program and its expansion is part of Prime Movers at George Washington University’s vision to “test new student media models in Philadelphia, develop a plan to scale up student media throughout the city, and develop a cost-effective model of Prime Movers for other cities.”
“We are celebrating this important moment in a journey that began more than two years ago. Prime Movers sought and received a grant from Knight Foundation to test new student media models in Philadelphia and develop a plan to scale-up student media throughout the city,” said Gilliam, founder and director of Prime Movers at George Washington University. “The first six pilot clubs had significant achievements in the spring of 2007. Now with the addition of 18 new clubs we are thrilled that hundreds of students from Philadelphia’s inner-city schools will have the opportunity to take part in media clubs this school year.”
“This program is a unique and extraordinary journalism program, that promises to have a positive impact on students’ overall performance in school, while launching some participants on the path to become journalism professionals in the 21st century news media industry,” said Acel Moore, Prime Movers/Philadelphia program manager and Philadelphia Inquirer Associate Editor Emeritus.
The following news media outlets have agreed to send journalists into the schools to mentor students:
The journalists’ charge will be to help teach students journalism fundamentals and how to produce student-run media for their schools. The journalists will also act as mentors to Temple University students in the School of Communications who work alongside them in the participating high school media clubs.
At the end of the school year in June 2008, there will be a student celebration for all 24 schools, at which students will exhibit their completed work in various media.
The 24 high schools taking part in the after-school media clubs program are: Abraham Lincoln High School, The Academy at Palumbo High School, Benjamin Franklin High School, Charles Carroll High School, Constitution High School, Dobbins Technical High School, Frankford High School, Vaux High School, Franklin Learning Center, Furness High School, George Washington High School, Germantown High School, John Bartram High School, Kensington CAPA High School, Kensington Culinary High School, Overbrook High School, Paul Robinson High School, Philadelphia High School for Business and Technology, Roxborough High School, Simon Gratz High School, Stephen A. Douglas High School, Strawberry Mansion High School, Swenson High School, and the Youth Study Center.
Today’s announcement took place at the Journalism Education Association/National Scholastic Press Association 2007 Fall National High School Journalism Convention in Philadelphia. Ninety-five Philadelphia School District students and teachers from the Media Clubs joined more than 5,000 high school students and teachers from all over the nation at the conference.
About Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invests in journalism excellence worldwide and in the vitality of Philadelphia and 25 other U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $300 million to advance quality journalism and freedom of expression. It focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.