SJC Participates in Digital Waves Youth Media Festival

October 27, 2013

PATCHOGUE, N.Y. October 28, 2013 - This past weekend, St. Josephs College (SJC) hosted 40 aspiring young reporters as part of the Digital Waves Youth Media Festival, sponsored by the Radio Rookies program at WNYC. The NewsHive@StJoes brought together high school and college students from New York City, Boston and Portland, Maine, in order to create video reports framed around the major issues of this years mayoral contest. The purpose of these videos was to draw the attention of policymakers to the challenges that impact the lives of youth in the five boroughs.

At this event, students were given only 24 hours to conceive, film and produce video content on an issue that they felt needed to be discussed. They spent Friday night working in teams with a mentor, selecting a topic that they wanted to report on. The following day, they hit the streets interviewing and editing the film they collected into a cohesive narrative that highlighted their issue of choice.

This work culminated in a media slam Saturday night at SJC. For the first round, a panel of four figures in local media judged each of the presentations and eliminated two teams from each round until the winning team was chosen. The winning team, Team Cassie Wagler, created a film on the impact of teen parenting on both the child and the parent, and received a $400 prize for their victory.

"The NewsHive workshop gave young journalists a crash course in how to tell a good story quickly, said Dr. Theodore Hamm, chairperson of the Department of Journalism and New Media Studies at SJC. "These skills are both a necessity in the media world of today and an integral component of our journalism and new media studies major at SJC."  

To view photos of the event, visit http://wnycradiorookies.tumblr.com/. For more information regarding this event or the journalism and new media program at St. Josephs College, call Dr. Theodore Hamm at 718.940.5307.