Each summer, WUNC reporters share the coffee station with high school students. The dozen or so youth mingle with our staff and dip their toes into audio storytelling and the weird world of public radio. This year, with our offices closed and the coffee only flowing at home, the Youth Reporting Institute had to shake things up, so they hopped on social media.
Program director Kamaya Truitt-Martin and program manager Allison Swaim chose to meet Gen Z on their turf, and put the call out for aspiring journalists on Instagram and published the stories as they arrived. Host Frank Stasio listens back through the sounds of this summer’s workshops with Swaim, along with Priyanka Rathnam and Olivia Haynie, who both participated in the weekly story crafting workshops and creation of autoethnographic audio stories. Rathnam is a rising eighth-grader at Magellan Charter School in Raleigh. Haynie is a graduate of Riverside High School and a rising first year at the University of Pennsylvania.
Join the students of the 2020 Youth Reporting Institute for a virtual listening party from 3-5pm on Saturday, August 8th that will feature their audio work and conversations with them about the stories that are important to their development as the next generation of journalists.
