CHILDREN’S PRESSLINE LAUNCHES NEW ORLEANS BUREAU

Teaches Journalism and Leadership Skills, Is Free and Open to All New Orleans Youth

Washington, DC - February 17, 2009 - Children’s PressLine, the not-for-profit organization that teaches kids ages eight to 18 to be journalists, today announced the official launch of its New Orleans operations. Its first program will be a 12-week workshop commencing on Saturday, Feb. 28 at Charles Drew Elementary School, with subsequent meetings to be held there each Friday from 3:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. The program is free and open to all young New Orleans residents. Pre-registration is required.

Children’s PressLine provides an immersion-learning environment, training participants to assume a journalist’s responsibilities and compete for interviews with adult reporters. Each team member learns to execute all facets of journalistic work, including story development, research, reporting, interviewing and writing articles for Children’s PressLine’s media partners. In this real world environment, Children's PressLine’s participants gain a true sense of their capabilities as journalists and a deeper sense of responsibility to cover youth issues for an adult audience.

Already, three members of the New Orleans chapter have experienced the challenges and opportunities presented by Children’s PressLine, having been assigned by CPL to cover the Inauguration of President Barak Obama. Their reporting from Washington, DC, as well as a feature on the youths themselves, was published in The Times Picayune. In coming weeks and months, Children's PressLine’s New Orleans team members will report on issues of direct impact to them, including education, juvenile justice, healthcare, and more. The program will be coordinated by Ian McNulty, a New Orleans journalist and author of A Season of Night: New Orleans Life After Katrina.

“We are completely charmed by the New Orleans community and thrilled to establish a bureau there,” said Marsha Ralls, CEO and Publisher of Children’s PressLine. “We know that Ian’s experience as a professional journalist and his on-the-ground knowledge of the city make him the perfect leader to build an engaged CPL New Orleans youth bureau.”

To pre-register for the Feb. 28 event, New Orleans students, or students' family members, should contact Ian McNulty at 504-343-4996 or imcnulty@cox.net.

Children’s PressLine, together with its predecessor organization Children’s Express, has a legacy of political coverage and has reported from every major political convention since 1976. At its first convention, a Children’s Express reporter scooped mainstream press, breaking the news that Jimmy Carter was choosing Walter Mondale as his running mate.

At the 2008 Republican and Democratic National conventions, the Children's PressLine team interviewed more than 200 elected officials, delegates and local youth, producing 73 pieces of content in print, video and audio formats. This work was published in New York’s Daily News and The Amsterdam News, Metro USA (Boston, Philadelphia and New York editions), Minneapolis Star Tribune, and PBS’ The Online NewsHour, reaching more than four million adults and youth. Children’s PressLine was also featured by CBS’s The Early Show, ABC’s News Now, Fox's Good Day Colorado, ChannelOne, Minneapolis Public Radio, Newsweek, the Oregonian, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jackson (Miss.) Clarion Ledger and the Greeley (Colo.) Tribune.

ABOUT CHILDREN’S PRESSLINE:
Children's PressLine is a not-for-profit organization that trains kids aged eight to 18 to be journalists. What sets CPL apart is that our young journalists report and edit stories targeted to adult audiences as well as kids. Major broadcast and print media outlets across the country air and print these stories, including over 400 newspapers nationwide such as the New York Daily News, Metro New York, New York Amsterdam News, Tweens and Teens News and more.

Children’s PressLine is heir to a 26-year-old tradition of integrating youth perspective into mainstream media. A spin-off of Children’s Express – the only youth-produced news organization to win both Emmy and Peabody Awards - CPL seeks to continue empowering the voice of youth, serving as a window to the hearts and minds of this under heard and underserved community. The result is an unquestionably authentic, graceful and mature approach to the search for truth.

###

PDF of Press Release: Click Here