Graphic that reads: Independent youth-led education journalism. thenewedu.org, KSVT, The New EDU. Includes photo of Kentucky Student Voice Team. The Kentucky Student Voice Team (KSVT) published the first articles on The New Edu, a new youth-led education media service on Oct. 10.

The New Edu is an independent online publication featuring student writing and reporting on Kentucky’s education system. The publication will leverage the unique perspectives of young people to provide reporting and commentary about local schools, districts and state policymaking. 

The new publication is in addition to KSVT’s Summer Journalism Institute, a program to train Kentucky middle and high school students from across the state to cover education news and issues during the upcoming school year. The 17 Journalism Fellows in the inaugural cohort have received ongoing training from the team’s high school and college members working in partnership with journalism and curriculum experts. The KSVT and other students who make up The New Edu’s Press Corps will be paid to write.

Along with publishing content on their own digital platform, KSVT plans to share content freely with other Kentucky news media.

“We know here in Kentucky, as with newsrooms across the country, that journalists are struggling,” said Esha Bajwa, a recent graduate from Fern Creek High School (Jefferson County) who is helping to build capacity in the student reporters. “They do heroic work, but with the commercialization and consolidation of so much of our news media, there are just far too few journalists. We want to partner with those covering education in Kentucky to help ensure young people are better represented in what is written about our schools.”

The group has begun assembling a Journalism Advisory Dream Team, comprising Kentucky media professionals who commit to serve as informal advisors for the youth-led newsroom as they further develop the concept.

“There’s an urgent need for youth-centered work in journalism,” said Rainesford Stauffer, a freelance journalist, author and Kentuckian who is supporting students as the managing editor of The New Edu. “We picture a Kentucky-focused, community-driven media platform where young people are given the resources, support and training to tell the stories impacting their schools and communities themselves.”

Assistant editor Sara Falluji, a senior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (Fayette County), who has written about a range of education issues for the team, stressed that when it comes to informing the public about public education, Kentucky students bring unique added value. 

“Our journalism service is meant to play an important role in ensuring Kentucky youth are informed about the system in which we are learning and living,” Falluji said. “Who better than the primary stakeholders of our public schools, the people who spend 35 hours or more each week in our classrooms, to tell the stories about them?”

About KSVT

The KSVT is an independent, statewide organization of young people who are co-creating more just, democratic Kentucky schools and communities as research, policy and advocacy partners. Read more about the organization and The New Edu on the Kentucky Student Voice Team website.