Youth News Team: Ethical agricultural practices
After visiting Hillary Clinton’s website and reading her policies related to animal treatment, I decided to do my news piece on ethical agricultural as it relates to the use of GMOs and growth hormones, and livestock treatment.
As part of the Youth News Team partnership hosted by PSTV (the Philadelphia School District’s education channel) and WHYY, a team of five students from Saul High School in Philadelphia produced a set of video news reports on topics of interest to them during the week of the Democratic National Convention. NewsWorks presents those videos here with the students’ reflections on their experiences.
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After visiting Hillary Clinton’s website and reading her policies related to animal treatment, I decided to do my news piece on ethical agricultural as it relates to the use of GMOs and growth hormones, and livestock treatment.
When my Saul Media Club advisor Mr. Smith approached me at the end of the school year to apply for the 2016 DNC Youth News Team, I had no idea that I would be so grateful to have been a part of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. In particular, being asked to be one of two YNT spokespersons to represent the program during a major press conference was both a nerve-wracking and exhilarating experience. Having my family see me on the evening news made me super-excited to be part of this program.
Because I aspire to become a veterinarian, I decided to pick a topic related to my animal science major at W.B. Saul High School of Agricultural Science and supported by involvement in the Future Farmers of America. After visiting Hillary Clinton’s website and reading her policies related to animal treatment, I decided to do my news piece on ethical agricultural as it relates to the use of GMOs and growth hormones, and livestock treatment.
Having learned about these topics in my classes at Saul, I have gained a greater appreciation of the politics and controversy associated with mass food production during the Philly Feast street festival. During the festival, I had the opportunity to interview the director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, the executive director of the Food Trust, and the co-founder of Live Real. Meeting these three interviewees was truly an enlightening experience.
Throughout the two weeks of the program, I gained confidence and self-esteem from this Democratic National Convention experience. I’ve become comfortable approaching people and communicating professionally with experts. I’ve also learned that being a news reporter requires you to be a good listener in order to guide the conversation and modify the questions to get the most out of the interview. Additionally, I learned a great deal about the behind-the-scenes of news reporting. Before this experience I had minimal computer skills. Now I am able to operate video cameras, audio devices, and edit videos. I look forward to using all these skills I learned to produce future projects for PSTV and WHYY with my school’s Media Club.
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Walter Biddle Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences is a magnet high school focused on agricultural sciences in Roxborough. Saul is the largest agricultural farm school in the United States.
Youth News Team is a student reporting program hosted by PSTV and WHYY with partners including the Host Committee for the Democratic National Convention, KYW Newsradio, and the Rendell Center for Civics and Civic Engagement. The program is intended to provide Philadelphia students a unique opportunity to cover the 2016 Democratic Convention, the issues that affect their neighborhoods, and and how those issues relate to national political debate.
The program is funded by The Philadelphia Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation through a grant to WHYY.
To provide mentorship, student teams were matched with local media partners including NBC10, Philadelphia Magazine, KYW, and WHYY to provide professional perspective and feedback.
Five student teams were selected from an overall pool of 17 high school team applications and 41 middle school individual applications.
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