Video spotlight: Young journalists document life, stories around Leelanau, Benzie Counties
From staff reports
Every Friday during the summer, Music in the Park brings Northport together for an evening of live music, dancing and community. Have you made it to Music in the Park in Northport this summer? In this video, Meridian Parsons documents the crowds, the dancing, the food, and the joy on Friday nights at the Kent Holton Pavilion.
Parsons, a rising senior at Leland, contributes to the Meeting Young Journalists Where They Are video storytelling project, spearheaded and co-published by the Glen Arbor Sun and our Benzie County-based sister publication, The Betsie Current—thanks to a grant from Press Forward Northern Michigan.
“Meeting Young Journalists” is a collaboration between local media and middle- and high school-aged Northern Michiganders, to explore what kinds of stories interest them and their peers, and which mediums resonate with them. Through this project we hope to inspire the next generation of young journalists, and better understand how news can reach them.
Click on the photo to view Nora Ciolek’s video postcard, which was taken on Glen Lake, during the beautiful month of July. Ciolek, a rising senior at Glen Lake Community Schools, loves spending her free time hanging with her friends on the boat and creating fun videos with them.
Maya Truog’s video features Empire, one of the many beautiful towns in northern Michigan. With serene shops on the downtown streets, vast waterfront access to Lake Michigan, and trails protected by the Leelanau Conservancy, the unique Michigan environment is able to thrive and be appreciated by all.
The air has been hazy and smokey lately due to the wildfires in Canada and Minnesota. Tanner Brown, age 12, spoke with Grand Traverse Lighthouse DNR officer Gail Webb, a lighthouse docent, and Knot Just a Bar owner, David Waskiewicz on July 18 about how it is affecting business and their visitors. Watch this video to hear Brown’s questions.
These pictures were taken at Peterson Park beach in Northport. The photographer, 14-year-old Hazel Wetherbee, is entering her freshman year at Northport Public School. She thought a good audio for this video would be a poem called, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” This is a piece from a movie called The Outsiders, which happens to be one of her favorite movies.
Twelve-year-old Tanner Brown can tell you all about the Fourth of July fireworks in Northport, where he lives.
In fact, Brown’s narrated video story, “The flare behind Northport’s Fourth of July fireworks display,” premiers our Meeting Young Journalists Where They Are video storytelling series, which the Sun is publishing online and on social media together with our Benzie County-based sister publication, The Betsie Current.
These videos were created for Meeting Young Journalists Where They Are, a project of the Sun and the Current—thanks to a grant from Press Forward Northern Michigan, hosted by the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation. “Meeting Young Journalists” is an innovative way to collaborate with high school- and college-aged Northern Michiganders, who will be paid to produce compelling and topical local news in their rural communities through online video platforms.“In journalism, we often talk about rural ‘news deserts’ and how people living in communities without adequate access to local reporting and storytelling become less engaged in civic life and less trusting of institutions—from government, to schools, to hospitals,” says Jacob Wheeler, Sun editor.
“We worry that teenagers and young adults are also turning away from news and civic engagement. That’s why we’re trying to ‘meet young journalists where they are’ and appeal to their sense of storytelling, through mediums that speak to their generation.”
Click here to learn more about the project.
