The Mississippi Youth Media Project is a six-week summer newsroom for high-school student journalists.
YMP is dedicated to narrative change, strengthening journalism and reducing disparities in Mississippi by teaching and modeling rigorous cause-solution reporting and truth-telling, especially about communities Mississippi media routinely under-serve. A major goal is to create an exclusive and well-trained pipeline of journalists from Mississippi both to join the state’s newsrooms and to take lessons from Mississippi into the larger journalism ecosphere and other workspaces. The students get on-the-job workforce and project-management training and are paid $16 an hour to work 30 hours a week during the project.
In summer 2026, YMP students will report on how gun violence affects public health and all Mississippians whether in urban, suburban or rural communities. They will interrogate the root causes of violence, focusing on how shootings, community exposure to violence, and limited access to trauma care and resources affect individuals and families. They will also investigate how other communities have responded to increased gun violence.
Similarly, the student journalists unpacked education-equity realities in 2023, then solutions to inadequate elections coverage in 2024, and health inequities in 2025, all posted on their own student-named website: jxnpulse.com. In 2026, the students will brainstorm and report stories of their choosing about gun violence in Mississippi, ultimately creating a fun and informative digital flipbook of powerful journalism to be distributed widely through social media and other channels. (See their Reimagining Elections flipbook at jxnpulse.com.)
YMP students also will engage in critique about media coverage about young people and violence, probing the most effective ways to communicate the challenges to both communities and decision-makers without reporting on the issue in ways that harm young people. Like in 2024 and 2025, they will host and participate in solutions circles with both Mississippi Free Press staff and the general public to hear directly from the people about their needs and concerns. Teenagers in and near Jackson, Mississippi will engage in public and one-on-one interviews with community members, experts and public servants about this urgent issue.
Working with an experienced journalism and teaching team including Donna Ladd and Torsheta Jackson, YMP students will produce written and video stories based on those interviews and create a unique Mississippi youth-violence guide they design working together with the MFP staff and other collaborators. Their work will be published at the YMP journalism site, jxnpulse.com, and cross-published at mississippifreepress.org.
All invited participants are required to report to the Mississippi Free Press office in downtown Jackson on time on Monday-Friday from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Participants receive a one-hour lunch break daily and are paid stipends for their work. WE DO NOT PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION TO AND FROM YMP AND CANNOT PROVIDE HOUSING FOR ANYONE WHO LIVES OUTSIDE THE JACKSON AREA.
All new YMP student journalists must be at least 15 years old by the program’s start date and age 17 and younger throughout the course of the program.
Please email YMP Program Manager Torsheta Jackson at Torsheta@mississippifreepress.org if you have questions.
Applications Close May 15, 2026 at 11:59 PM.