Junior Press

Junior Press is an international organisation dedicated to promoting newspapers in Europe written by students. Visit the Junior Press Website. They have a database of many Junior Press initiatives across Europe. They provide young people with guidelines for writing articles, censorship laws and the rights of young journalists. One of their objectives is to promote the idea of a junior press card.
Each year they hold a conference where young journalists from around Europe are invited. A number of journalists from Student Xpress were invited to Paris this year. Details of this conference and the topics of discussion at their workshops are set out in detail on the website.

Youth Press Conference Report in Paris
Catherine Howard, a journalist from Student Xpress, was invited to Paris to attend a Junior Press conference. She relates the experience of a lifetime.

Junior Press in Sweden
Fredrik Engstrom and Peter Hellman relate their experience of setting up a paper for young people in Sweden.

Youth Press in Paris

On the 30th November last I flew out to Paris, France to attend the 2nd Youth Press European Meeting. Supported by the French Ministry of Youth and the E.U., the meeting brought together journalists of the youth press from Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, France, Poland, Italy, Belgium, Portugal and Romania. The project manager was Olivier Drapier, who works for J.Presse, the French Youth Press Organisation.

Around fifty of us spent five days at the INJEP centre in the Paris suburb of Marly-le-Roi. INJEP had accommodation, conference facilities and cafeterias, all under one roof. It was about 30 minutes from the centre of Paris. We attended meetings, presentations and debates, we visited Paris and, at night, we conducted important experiments, e.g. how to cram thirteen people into a room made for two and how to have a party without disturbing the neighbours.

The Participants

Everyone who attended the meeting was involved, in one way or another, in youth media. Many were members of youth press organisations around Europe; others were representing individual publications, either produced in their schools or by their organisations. There were delegations from Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Denmark, Poland, Portugal, Romania and, of course, Ireland.

The Youth Publications

The first activity of the meeting was the presentations. The first night we had a short introductory session where we each had to say a few lines about ourselves. The following morning saw the start of the youth press publication presentations. Each delegation talked about their newspapers and magazines - what it was about, who ran it, how it was financed, its distribution, etc. Many of the newspapers and magazines appeared to be extremely professional. They seemed to contain much more political issues than the publications here. The others at the meeting thought it was strange that the Northern Ireland issue doesn't feature more in our youth newspapers. One thing was certainly obvious - youth press is certainly much more prominent in other European countries than it is here in Ireland.

The Youth Press Organisations

Next came the presentations of the youth press organisations. Such organisations currently are in operation in France, Portugal, Germany, Romania and Hungary. They are of tremendous benefit to the young journalists in those countries. They offer advice and support, administer national youth press cards, and they organise workshops, training and other activities.

DUE, the Hungarian youth press organisation holds a journalist camp during the summer, similar to Irish College in this country. Portugal's youth press organisation is only recently up and running, thanks to all the hard work and dedication of Patricia Nogueria da Silva. Patricia attended the 1st Youth Press European Meeting, and after seeing what young people in other countries had accomplished, she decided to set up her own organisation. She was invited back to the 2nd meeting to give a presentation on her organisation. Two Swedish boys, Fredrik Engstrom and Peter Hellman, gave a lively presentation on their project on an online article exchange database. (See their article below).

Presentation of the Countries

At the end of the first night we had the presentation of the countries. Each delegation had to present their country in a humorous way, using a sketch, a song, a dance, etc. It was hilarious, to say the least. The Belgians brought us some of their famous chocolate, the Swedes scared us with their strange games (the favourite being "The Rocket"), the Poles had people in strange positions and the Germans pretended to be toddlers again while they put on an episode of a national game show.

Debates and Workshops

For the rest of the week the meetings consisted of debates and workshops. We had two debates - one on the war in Kosovo and one about Europe. Not one of the publications represented by the fifty of us at the meeting had covered the war in Kosovo. As a result, we couldn't really discuss how we'd dealt with it, so instead we talked about the reaction in our countries to the war, to the refugees to the actions of the politicians. In the Europe debate, we discussed what it meant to us to members of the European Union. To most it wasn't a big issue. The Danes felt that they had only suffered as members of the E.U. Due to E.U. legislation, they had lost some of their environment laws and they felt that that had been detrimental to their country.

There were three different workshops to choose from and, since they were all on two days, we each got to go to two of them. I chose the European Youth Press Card and the Censorship workshops. Both were interesting, but it's the press card workshop that was the most productive. Over the two days, with the two different groups, revisions on the European Journalists of the Youth Press Charter were made.

All Work and No Play

Obviously we didn't spend the entire week working! There were events organised for us throughout the week. On the Thursday, we were taken into Paris. We walked to the top of the Arc de Triomphe - a winding staircase that seemed to go on forever - and took pictures on top in freezing cold weather and gale force winds. We then walked the length of the Champs Elysees to Place de la Concorde and then walked around the Tuilleries. We also visited the Lourve and the Eiffel Tower. On the last night there was a concert put on especially for us by a band called Article 2. In a nutshell, it was the most fun you could have in five days.

Resolution

Coming away from the meeting, we each had to have a resolution. Mine was to look into starting an Irish Youth Press Organisation. Along with two of my friends, we have already taken the first steps in the process.

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Sweden's Student Newspaper

The School Newspaper Project was started by students in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1999, and is run by a non-profit organisation. The project has grown from an interesting discussion with the school newspapers in the local area to a nation-wide initiative with many people involved. Below we will describe the project's view on a school newspaper, its function in a school, and the central aims of the project.

School media are a necessity

There are many reasons to demand working school media at all school levels. Students often have many good ideas and thoughts about how society and the school could excel, and partly because today, there are few media that completely and properly address the best interests of the students.

We believe that schools, by starting and supporting working democratic newspapers can create more vivid and diverse school environments, and that co-operation between those school newspapers that already exist provides a greater opportunity for students to make themselves heard; not only in school, but in society as well.

Compared to any professional newspaper, it can be seen that school newspapers differ in many ways. Instead of being focused entirely on the readers and the methods of best satisfying their demands, the focus is instead aimed at the writers. The main purpose of a school newspaper is not to promote the passive indulgence of information, but rather to encourage writing and the sharing of opinions.

The democratic school newspaper is open to all opinions. In contrast to normal newspapers, the school newspaper itself should not be opinionated or profiled in any way. It is a resource for the students to express their own opinions and thoughts. For this process to be able to be called democratic it should be open to all kinds of opinions and messages. And that is exactly what makes a school newspaper so interesting: the opportunity for all students to have their opinions and thoughts published on equal terms.

Co-operation is Essential

There are already many working democratic school newspapers, but they are like islands, isolated throughout the school world, without any possibilities of contact with each other. The aim of the School Newspaper Project is to commence a co-operation between these newspapers, and between the newspapers it has supported in the starting process. By starting a large network of school newspapers there are many possibilities for positive exchanges.

Despite the fact that the school newspaper is a phenomenon that involves a lot of the current youth culture, a small school newspaper can find it very difficult to make itself heard outside the local school. By building a network of school newspapers, school newspapers can become media to be reckoned with, with common activities and productions. Together the school newspapers can reach unprecedented heights, an impossible feat without co-operation.

Article Exchange

Although many articles in a school newspaper pertain mostly to local events, many opinions and thoughts can not be tied to any individual school. The school newspaper project is aimed at building and maintaining an Internet based archive, consisting of articles from the many newspapers involved in the project. All the participating school newspapers can use this archive to find material for their own newspapers. This kind of an archive would serve as a great resource, both for the writers at each individual school, who get the opportunity to spread their ideas to a larger audience, and for the readers of the school newspapers who get the chance to gain new perspectives, not thought of locally.

This Internet-based archive was initially thought of as a project limited to Swedish newspapers, but during the "Jpresse" meeting in Paris we also discussed the possibilities of an international database. Feel free to contact us!

If you want to know more about the project, please contact us by email, and we will be happy to send you more information or, perhaps, start some sort of co-operation.

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