March 5, 2004

Child Health and Development Project Will Engage Trenton Teenagers as Fledgling Journalists and Communicators

An ambitious effort to provide all Trenton infants and young children with maximum health care in the crucial, early childhood development years--and to give newspaper and broadcast journalists additional background and skills to cover this important issue throughout New Jersey--enters a new training phase with a journalism skills workshop for Trenton high school students to help tell the story.

The program is organized by Children’s Futures, a Trenton-based organization funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Cosponsors of the media training phase of the project include the New Jersey Press Association (NJPA) and the Journalism Resources Institute (JRI) in The School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS) of Rutgers University.

A team of Trenton Central High School students and other youth from the community will participate in a day-long workshop entitled :”Many Community Voices:Telling the Story of Childhood Development, Health and Survival Through Young People”. The workshop will be held at the Marriott Conference Center at Lafayette Yards in Trenton from 9 am. to 3 pm, Wednesday, March 10, 2004.

Jerome Aumente, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and special counselor to Dean Gus Friedrich of SCILS, is organizing and will moderate the workshop as part of a series of programs he is directing with Melinda Green, vice-president, and Rush Russell, president, of Children’s Futures. The latter is a multimillion dollar program to provide an entire community of infants and children with health care, parenting skills and other social services. Family centers have been established throughout the city, and a network of community organizations are collaborating.

“The lessons being learned from the project will have important implications in other parts of New Jersey and nationally,” Aumente said. “We see this as a good opportunity to provide newspaper, television and radio journalists, and those using newer multimedia through the Internet with journalistic skills and background to better cover the childhood development and health field.”

A seminar for professional journalists with child development experts was held last June in Trenton. Out of that meeting came the suggestion to reach out directly to the young people who play such a central role in the issues. As potential future parents they must understand the intricacies of parenting, good prenatal and post natal health care for developing children, and family obligations and opportunities.

Ways to effectively communicate to young people information on forging responsible relationships, better nutrition, avoidance of violence, alcohol and drug abuse and improved family dynamics will be among the topics young people will be asked to research and report in their own voices, Aumente said.

A team of teachers from Trenton Central High School in its Media Technology Academy led by Tracey A. Davis and including Jane Reed, journalism; Edward Smoller, photography, and Scott Sorrentino, television production, will help select 25 students for the workshop and guide follow up projects. In addition, other young people will be nominated by community leaders or can apply to the seminar directly.

Trenton School Superintendent, Dr. James H. Lytle, has pledged his cooperation and that of his staff in the new media outreach venture. The office of Mayor Douglas Palmer who participated in the June seminar has also agreed to cooperate in the new project aimed at young people and media skills. Pamela Pruitt, Vice President of Business Development for WIMG radio, who also chairs a new foundation to assist the Trenton schools, has joined the advisory group for the youth communications project.

The March 10th workshop in Trenton will give the young people background on child health and development issues presented by specialists and family center directors. Journalists from newspapers, radio and television in the city and the state will examine fundamental journalism skills and approaches to covering the issues.

The participating teenagers will be invited to develop ideas and future student pilot projects on how the issues related to young people, their families, friends, and schoolmates can be better reported through both the professional news media, and through student media. The Trenton Central High School students have access to their own student press, photography, cable television facilities and radio outlets in the community. Long range, the young people will be asked to work with their teachers and news media representatives on news and information child development projects.

Acel Moore, Associate Editor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and one of the founders of the National Association of Black Journalists, will give the opening address on March 10. A responding panel includes Aubrey Huston, Executive Editor of The Princeton Packet; Pamela Pruitt, Vice President of WIMG Radio, and Thomas Engelman, Director, The NJ Press Foundation of NJPA.

Janice Selinger, Deputy Executive Director for Production at NJN Public Television in an afternoon session will discuss documentary and television production career opportunities, and student media projects young people might undertake on health topics.

Professor John Pavlik, director of the Journalism Resources Institute at Rutgers-SCILS, will demonstrate how newer media including the Internet can be used in the child health project. Professor Thomas Petner of Temple University’s communication school will describe a multimedia urban laboratory he is developing to train journalism students in covering key urban and health issues. Dean Gus Friedrich of SCILS will outline communication and journalism study and scholarship opportunities at SCILS. Other area colleges and universities will also be invited to join the project.

Jerry Tully, co-owner of Bright Skies Productions, Princeton, and former executive producer, NBC News and MSNBC will be on a responding panel with Guy Baehr, Associate Director of the JRI at SCILS, and Mercedes Diaz, a Rider University journalism instructor.

Melinda Green will lead an afternoon panel that includes Roberto Hernandez, Program Director, El Centro de Recursos para Familias/Children’s Futures, Catholic Charities, Diocese of Trenton, Fa mily Development and Child Advocacy Division, and Dolores A. Bryant, site director, Children’s Futures Parent Child Center North, The Children’s Society , Trenton. They will identify priority topics the youth communicators might undertake.

Aumente, who will moderate the day-long seminar, said that through NJPA Executive Director John O’Brien, and Thomas Engelman, director of the New Jersey Press Foundation, a unit of NJPA, information will be given to the young people on future careers in newspapers, scholarship opportunities, and access to the annual summer minorities training workshop open to New Jersey high school students. Engelman will be one of the seminar speakers and resource people. Missy Flynn, NJPA Publications Director, will also participate in the seminar.

As part of the media training initiatives, Aumente is also working with Children’s Futures to develop a seminar in the Fall of 2004 for professional print and broadcast journalists, legislative and policymakers, and child health development specialists . They will examine key legislative, economic and policy issues at the local, state and federal levels affecting family life and child health development. “The idea is to develop an early warning system to identify key issues that will surface in the near future, and have the journalists, policymakers and child development specialists share ideas and communicate with each other,” Aumente said.

Print and broadcast news media are invited to cover the March 10th workshop, or send journalists to participate as observers. Individuals from community, school and college groups with a special interest in the news media and child health development issues, and who wish to learn more about the project or become involved, are also invited to contact the organizers, Aumente said. The workshop will include background materials, a luncheon and refreshments, and there is no charge to those accepted as invited participants.

For further information or to submit nominations for student participants, contact Melinda Green, Vice President, Children’s Futures, 28 West State St., Trenton, NJ 08608-1602, Tel:609-695-1977, ext. 102; Fax: 609-695-5392, or e-mail: mgreen@childrensfutures.org

Professor Emeritus Jerome Aumente can be reached at telephone: 540-635-6395 or e-mail: aumente@scils.rutgers.edu