Media Salad has teamed with prominent journalists throughout India to build an online news hub aimed initially at helping Indian youth develop the skills and confidence they need to share their stories.
NewzyBee.com is still a work in progress, but it’s ready to accept submissions of original media from young people ages 14-25 who live in India. Veteran journalists based in India and the United States will select and edit submissions — and deliver some instruction to youth contributors along the way.
“Young people have valuable knowledge and opinions, and they and their best interests should be known in their communities,” said Christine Tatum, Media Salad’s founder and chief executive officer. “Their insights can raise awareness about important societal issues, foster collaboration and also demand accountability from government agencies and professional news organizations.”
At the invitation of the United States Department of State, Ms. Tatum traveled to Mumbai, India, in August to teach concepts in journalism to people with little to no professional experience in the trade. She taught in community settings and universities and also led for about a dozen of India’s top editors and reporters a two-day workshop on best practices for training young citizen journalists. Throughout the fall, those newsroom veterans, in turn, have led workshops for hundreds of youth living across India.
Now, the combined team of journalists living in India and the U.S. hopes to equip and empower those young people — and any other Indian youth wanting to participate in this burgeoning initiative — to share their stories through NewzyBee.com.
“So-called citizen journalists help create a well-informed public,” NewzyBee.com states. “They help marginalized people reclaim their voices. Sometimes, they collaborate with news organizations — and sometimes they strike out on their own, using an array of digital tools that can share their views with the world in mere minutes.”