How some news media are helping the young in the fight to save the planet
One of the perks of running a contest is that you get to find out about a lot of fabulous work, even though the jury can choose only a couple of winners. That was the case for The Planet Award category of this year’s Global Youth & News Media Prize.
Don’t get me wrong, the top winner, El Surturi, did a superb work in mobilizing Paraguayan young people to help save a national treasure: the Gran Chacos forest. (Later, come back and click on this link to read all about what they did.) But, for now, please keep going to learn about four other news media projects that gave young audiences, even children, both information and hope for saving the planet.
India’s venerable media giant Dainik Jagran got a silver award for galvanizing young Indians in very local quest, to save their own, choking city: Lucknow, which was fourth in the world for pollution levels. They combined solid reporting and a very creative campaign that saw thousands of students wear and hand out fun, anti-pollution face masks that featured a smile [that’s the photo with this story]. The result: authorities took action that reduced pollution significantly. Now Lucknow is at number 9. Still not great, but a definite improvement.
Two other cases illustrate how members of the generation who must cope with the consequences of past inaction are combining journalism and activism
In Belgium, group of 12 teenage student journalist-activists have raised climate change awareness through investigative journalism, social media videos and posts, articles and a dictionary. It has confronted politicians with its reporting and organized one of the earliest student strikes around climate control. The next goal is to try to refocus the student strikes around the world to unite around one concrete goal, such as #cut11percent, the reduction rate for carbon production that highly developed countries would have reach to make a difference in climate change.
Young Reporters for the Environment in Denmark is already working on a global scale and got a 2019 special recognition award for their efforts . This organization has 340,000 student reporters in 38 countries doing solutions reporting about the climate. Students can use any medium but must distribute their stories through social media and through a news entity and encourage action. It has seen some clear successes on the local level. In Israel, for example, YRE reporting and action influenced a local government to allocate more money for waste management.
This work can start for the very young.
The News-o-matic (USA) digital daily has seen 4 million children from ages 7 to 14 in 148 countries download the app. They get access to both a full variety of news at multiple reading levels in English, French, Spanish and Arabic, plus ways to talk back and inspiration to act. News-o-matic thoroughly engages its audience around the reality and hope of environmental issues as a regular part of a journalism that reports about the effects of the climate crisis plus what some world leaders are doing to try to help and what readers can do themselves.
“We promote the real, face-based conclusions of climate change,” says editor Russ Kahn. But News-o-matic also offers ways to help, for example, by suggesting readers find creative ways to make a contribution to organizations such as Students Rebuild, the Ocean Conservancy, and the Wildlife Conservation Network.
We’ll recognize some more excellent work in The Planet Award category in 2021 and will soon be soliciting entries. I can’t wait.
