Motivations for young journalists

Last spring I attended a training on volunteer management – which many of you may ask, what does volunteer management have to do with writing? You would actually be surprised on how many transferable skills I got at this conference. For example, one session addressed how young writers can improve their writing and get published.

As a writer myself I enjoyed the definitions that Energize Inc provides for writing. A couple in particular that I like are: “Writing forces you to decide what you think” and “writing shows that others value what you say.” There is something permanent about writing your thoughts down, especially to the point where they are being published. Not to say you cannot change your mind, but your thoughts have to be clear and supported – a concept we are always teaching our young journalists.

I think one of the challenges our young journalists face is moving beyond the personal essay. What they have to say is important, but mastering how they say it in order to reach a more diverse audience seems to be a stepping stone process.

This process is how ThreeSixty stresses that journalism is more than just writing. We stretch our students’ minds to go beyond the typical “show and tell” in order to explain why and how to their audience. We ask them to look at their stories from different perspectives. How might a teacher at a school read this differently than a politician?

I want to take that concept and push it even further. For each story I ask if we can illustrate and enhance this article with a photo or graphic. Are there sources or articles that we can link to in order to best support our argument? How can we stretch each article so that it has the biggest impact possible to please all storytellers – visual, oral, written and auditory? Everyday we see journalism transforming into these formats on the web. Just visit any daily online newspaper or magazine.

Eventually we hope that all of our students will utilize all of these critical thinking skills. But like I said before – journalism is a process. ThreeSixty teaches our students to take one stepping stone at a time.

For more notes about writing tips, please visit www.energizeinc.com.