By Irza Waraich

Just west of Prospect Park, the John Jay Campus packs four high schools into one building, one on top of the other. In the past, race and class divisions played out in the halls, and most visibly, on the sports teams.

After parents and students raised concerns about the teams creating de facto segregation, the schools merged their sports teams and students from all four schools produced a podcast documenting how the merger unfolded and how the community responded.

The podcast was created by students but was facilitated by WNYC and The Bell, a New York City-based nonprofit that offers high school students internships in journalism.

The Bell described the four schools in the John Jay Campus as “segregated by a staircase,” and revealed that three of the four schools had an economic need rate of more than 70% — a reflection of the students it aims to reach in bridging a opportunity gap.

Since 2017, The Bell has worked with students in New York City’s most under–served high schools, helping them report on issues in their schools and communities to highlight the impact of segregation.

In 2022, it launched the Youth Journalism Coalition, a grassroots effort to promote high-school journalism — not through outside groups, but within the Department of Education itself.

With a push from YJC and its student interns, the City Council passed a bill in February requiring the Department of Education to support the development of newspapers in the city’s high schools. The bill was largely informed by a Baruch College study that found only 27% of New York City high schools have student publications — most of them in schools with lower poverty rates and less diverse student bodies.

The bill, expected to reach the mayor’s desk in June, was shaped by the study’s findings on the link between high-school graduation rates and the opportunity for students to work on a high school newspaper, as well as first-hand accounts from students and educators. The bill aims to address the lack of data on where journalism programs exist and how their absence may signal broader inequities in academic opportunities.

For the YJC, getting high school students involved in journalism is about exposing them to career opportunities while also teaching civics and promoting advocacy.

Student interns at YJC have even testified before City Council in support of the bill, according to CJ Sanchez, the director of YJC, who says the students have shown “confidence,” which comes from the interviewing skills they have developed working on stories.

“They’re able to see that there are real tangible effects and impacts of the work that they’re doing,” Sanchez said.

The benefits of high school journalism are manifold. In addition to communication skills, student journalists “think more critically about the information they get, and hopefully, have higher standards for the journalism that they consume,” said Geanne Belton, who runs the Baruch College’s High School Journalism program, which includes a conference each spring where student journalists take seminars and win awards for their published work.

YJC was created in response to the overwhelming number of applications to programs like The Bell, aiming to meet the growing demand from interested students.

The students in these programs come from a range of schools, some with journalism programs, others without, reflecting the broad interest in student media.

The Baruch study revealed that among the 100 high schools with low poverty rates, nearly two-thirds have newspapers. In contrast, only seven of the 100 high schools with high poverty rates have newspapers.

Across the city, less than 15% of the schools in the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough, have high school newspapers, while close to half of all schools in Queens and Staten Island have them.

Most significantly, perhaps, the study found that graduation rates among schools with poverty rates of 78% or more are higher for schools that have a student newspaper than those that don’t.

Just as local newspapers have struggled, high school newspapers also have been on a  decline. An earlier study by journalism educator Jessica Siegel found that New York City high school newspapers have declined by nearly half since 2009.

According to the Baruch study, the decrease is due to a school’s reallocation of funding to other programs such as STEM or the departure of a journalism trained advisor that the school can’t replace.

But as some schools lacked those resources, students turned to organizations like The Bell and its sister organizations to explore opportunities in journalism.

In November 2022, when the YJC was a newly formed nonprofit, it hosted a roundtable discussion with DOE leaders and former Chancellor David C. Banks to highlight the findings of the Baruch study. The organization’s educators and students emphasized the strong appetite for student publications.

“What came out of that was the students really urging the DOE to take this on themselves and the DOE told us, ‘this is not a controversial issue — we want to support this, but we need the proof,’” Sanchez said.

The “proof” the DOE needed was that student newspapers could yield educational and equity benefits. It resulted in the Journalism For All pilot program, a $3 million initiative funded by public and private donors, to support 30 high schools for up to three years with a journalism curriculum. The pilot project will start this fall.

To fulfill its citywide vision, YJC secured support from sister organizations and public-private funding from City Council members. It also receives support from organizations like The Paley Center for Media and The Nation Fund.

Among other things, the funds support training for high school journalism teachers, conducted over the summer by faculty from the CUNY Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, ahead of the program’s launch in the fall.

YJC prioritized schools whose students showed an economic need and those that don’t have screened admissions to ensure the schools selected are accessible for anyone to enroll.

“The goal is geographic diversity, but really more about the socioeconomic need of the student population that they serve,” said Katina Paron, a journalism educator who developed the Journalism for All curriculum and was in the selection process.

Among the 30 selected schools for the pilot program, 84% of students in these schools face economic hardship, according to an assessment made by the YJC using the DOE’s Economic Need Index. Six schools report poverty rates above 95%.

According to the DOE, students are considered economically disadvantaged if they qualify for public assistance, have lived in public housing within the past four years or meet other criteria.

Pilot Project applicants hailed from all five boroughs, with most, 19, from Brooklyn; 13 from Manhattan; 11 from the Bronx; 10 from Queens and 2 from Staten Island.

Pilot programs recipients, however, were mostly in schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn, boroughs with the least journalism access.

When the three-year project is complete, YJC will present the findings and relevant data to the DOE so that they can build on the work.

As part of the pilot program, the YJC also plans to work with schools to reach out to their City Council members to provide extra funding for items such as microphones, camera equipment and more, Sanchez said.

One of the pilot schools is Park Slope Collegiate, located on the fourth floor of the John Jay Campus.

Autumn Wynn, 16, listened to the podcast on the sports merger just months after its release when she was a freshman at PSC. It inspired her to start her own podcast, The Melting Pot, which explored how New Yorkers subconsciously segregate, touching on topics like white flight and immigration.

Now a junior and an intern at YJC, advocating for journalism programs in New York City high schools, Wynn says student journalism opened up a new path for her.

“It just broadened my horizons,” Wynn said. “I didn’t know that there was a profession for me to just talk and express my opinion and it mattered.”

Lessons in the Journalism for All curriculum build critical-thinking skills and a range of communication skills, teaching students how to conduct interviews and how to structure a journalistic story. The curriculum also includes an introduction to media ethics and libel law.

YJC interns see student journalism as a tool for community engagement and advocacy, according to Sanchez, who said their work is; “not necessarily just for themselves. It’s really for their whole community.”

Indeed, at a time when local journalism is under fire, high school papers have even shone a light on important local issues.

That was the case for one high school newspaper, Pace University High School’s The Pacer, which highlighted the damage severe rain had inflicted on the school gym. The school had requested funding from the City Council for renovations, but it was only after the article’s publication that the Council responded with $750,000 for the improvements.

Belton, of the Baruch College high school journalism program, can attest to the growing interest in journalism. Not only have the number of high school entries increased, but some newcomers have won awards for their work against established papers.

“That’s promising in that things are starting to improve,” Belton said.

The full impact of the Journalism for All program won’t be clear for over a year. But with the bill expected to reach the mayor’s desk by June, Sanchez hopes data collection can begin as early as August, raising hopes that the Council will follow through on its promise to expand journalism programs throughout the city, providing a vital civic and communication opportunity for New York’s young people.