On the same day Tim Russert died our Youth Voices class graduated at the National Press Club with their families in the audience.

As usual, we played the five feature stories which will air on WAMU and on our website in the coming weeks to the audience in the First Amendment Lounge. Several alums customarily returned to lend their support to the class.

The Youth Voices project is modeled on one pioneered by Marianne McCune at the New York public radio station, WNYC. The last team won the 2008 Silver Communicator Award from the International Academy of the Visual Arts
http://www.wamu.org/about/press/08/yvcommunicator.php

The graduation ceremony is increasingly poignant for me because when we launched Youth Voices at WAMU there was some skepticism, both from listeners and from within. “Why are you putting those kids on the air?” was a persistent question.

Five years on and this reaction has come full circle as listeners hear beyond the youthful, diverse and often inexperienced voices to the person reporting the story and the issue itself. And a galvanizing bi-product is that members of staff from all over WAMU (and from the wider American University community) offer their skills and time to help out – looking for sponsorship, negotiating for facilities, coaching microphone skills, offering transport, or simply an encouraging word to a student in the frenetic and intimidating workspace of a radio newsroom.

But what’s most important is what hits the air. And thanks to the professional backroom team as well as the reporters, it is public radio investigative journalism of the highest quality, tackling crucial subjects which are often overlooked by us “grown-up” broadcasters, and focus-grouped out of the news agendas of commercial mass media organizations.

The incredible journeys homeless young people have to embark on to fight for survival; whether school uniforms foster discipline or frustrate creativity; why the media keeps howling about the coming of the apocalypse; why coverage of scientific advance doesn’t necessarily have to be about curing MY ailment to be interesting; and why the doctors and the drugs companies have collided to produce an addicted group of thousands of youngsters.

In some of these features, the stresses and challenges confronting our younger generation are evidenced through the subject chosen, and the intelligent script and delivery.
They are never expressed with resignation or frustration, but utilizing genuine, young, humor.

Tim Russert would have approved mightily of the depth of research the young reporters undertook, the professionalism with which they carried out their mission, and the sense of accomplishment, and privilege, to which they all attested publicly in their acceptance speeches. And contrary to what one prominent New York Times columnist wrote this morning (Monday) I’m confident he wasn’t the last one of a kind.