The Mississippi Youth Media Project is a summer newsroom for high-school student journalists, which Mississippi Free Press (formerly Jackson Free Press) editor Donna Ladd started as a W.K. Kellogg fellow in 2016, collaborating with Jackson Public Schools and other partners. While on hiatus during the pandemic, the Mississippi Free Press’ 501(c)(3), the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group acquired it from its last fiscal sponsor and it rebooted in summer 2023 with a focus on education equity. YMP is dedicated to rigorous cause-solution journalism and truth-telling, especially about communities Mississippi media under-serve. A major goal is to create an exclusive and well-trained pipeline of journalists from Mississippi both to join the state’s journalism outlets and to take lessons from Mississippi into the larger journalism ecosphere. This summer, with the support of the Community Foundation for Mississippi, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Microsoft, YMP will report on how election coverage in Mississippi can better serve all communities far beyond horse-race reporting, misinformation and partisan bickering. YMP students will report on how journalists can better respond to the election knowledge needs of people of all ages, especially those who live in communities traditionally ignored or under-served by the state’s media. Over six weeks as full-time, paid student journalists, Jackson-area teenagers will engage in public and one-on-one dialogues with community members about their election information needs and issues they want to see covered better. They will produce written and video stories based on those interviews and create a unique Mississippi voters guide they design working together with the MFP staff and other collaborators. They will host a community solutions circles to engage in deep listening about how Mississippi (and U.S.) media can better cover elections and provide needed information without paywalls. Their work will be published at the YMP journalism site, jxnpulse.com, and cross-published at mississippifreepress.org.

If you are interested in becoming a 2024 YMP student journalist, please answer all the below questions so that we may learn more about you. Benefits of the program include stipends (based on $16 an hour for 30 hours of on-site work a week for six weeks), workforce development, leadership development and mentoring. Participants will learn skills and strategies in reporting, videography, photography and audience-building. Note that this required-participation program only allows up to three days non-emergency absences during the summer, so please commit to full attendance if you apply. You will get behind if you miss more than three days, and your team members depend on you to contribute your part, so attendance is not negotiable.