National Press/Media Campaign

Part of our strategy for maintaining high awareness and involvement in the initiative over the entire year calls for a continual stream of articles in the local press and media.  We would like to see several articles about what is happening in the community with regard to the initiative every week.  Some articles would be about what is being done that is good and some about missed opportunities or actions (or lack of action) that are having negative effects on students achieving grade level mastery. 

  1. These articles should mention as many individuals as possible that are going above and beyond to advance education in the community (bragging rights for students, teachers, and anyone else possible) as well as examples of how such people are being honored by the community, etc. as well as people who are not doing what they should for education (shame).
  2. Articles that praise local people and articles of local public interest are good for the local press as well because this helps circulation (everyone wants a copy of the article that names a relative or themselves).

This Reporter Sub-program serves multiple purposes:

  1. Keep the initiative high in the awareness of the students and the entire community over time.
  2. Provide incentives for students, teachers and everyone else to do good for the initiative (photo-ops, bragging rights for students and families, positive publicity for companies, individuals and organizations, etc.) and avoid having a negative influence on the initiative (e.g. blocking progress due to bureaucracy or lack of courage of conviction or other reason).
  3. Intensify the involvement in the initiative among those students involved in the Reporter Program.

How we would do this?

  1. Establish a nationwide network of student reporters in almost every high school in the country that would write articles every week. 
    1. Establish an Advisory/support panel that would provide guidance to the student reporters specifically to this part of the initiative.
    2. Provide an online mini course for these students to provide them with guidance for writing good articles as guidance for local volunteer mentors for the program as well as a national website with advice, tips and tricks and discussion forum, etc.
  2. Establish partnerships with national associations of local newspapers or media or journalists, etc..  Getting a lot of people involved in doing anything with local press as well as having the local press be a good conduit about what is happening in the local community relative to a project of high interest is good for the local media and for the project.  We would like the national associations to partner in promoting local support as well as support the national level with publicity and how to guidance for students, etc.
    1. We would lobby them to encourage their local members to devote space or time to reporting about what is happening relative to the initiative in their communities.
    2. We also want the national organization partner (and other partners that encourage journalism or reporting) to participate in developing the online mini course and develop and operate the web site to support student journalists and their teacher/mentors.
    3. Encourage establishment of local partnerships between local press/media and local student reporters and their teacher and other local mentors.
  3. Have the articles that describe the best and the worst of what is happening locally be fed to us to pass to regional and national press and media.

Getting started:

It is intended that a special team will take on this project and start the reach-out campaign to appropriate potential partner organizations in the near future.  If you would like to be part of this team, or if you are affiliated with an organization that is involved in press/media industry (including school newspapers/blogs)  or in encouraging education and would like to find out more about the initiative or how you could be involved, please contact us at one of the following addresses:

Thank you for your interest in improving education and the future prospects of our society.