A free-admissions program that equips NYC public schools to launch or sustain student-run newspapers, offering teacher training, student fellowships, journalistic curriculum support, and school-wide civic engagement initiatives.
Every day, our teens are bombarded with disinformation. The News Literacy Project released a study in 2024 finding 80% of teens on social media reported seeing posts that spread or promote conspiracy theories, and 81% of those are inclined to believe them. Meanwhile, local journalism is collapsing. Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism found the U.S. lost nearly 3200 newspapers since 2005.
The lack of trusted information poses an urgent risk to our democracy’s future. Today’s teens already experienced the isolating effects of the COVID pandemic. They spend too much time on social media — what students themselves call “brain rot.” They want and deserve better.
Scholastic journalism as a powerful solution that builds community by enabling students to reliably and ethically report on issues that matter to them and their peers.
The need is tremendous. Here in New York City, 73% of public high schools lack student news publications, according to a 2022 Baruch College study. More alarming, among the 100 schools with the highest poverty rates, only 7% had newspapers. And NYC isn’t alone. According to a 2019 Journalism Education Association survey, 25% of journalism advisors work in urban schools, and 9% work in high-poverty schools.
This systemic failure means tens of thousands of NYC students in most need are denied access to the transformative powers of scholastic journalism, which builds critical thinking, collaboration, leadership and communication. Among NYC schools with poverty rates of 78% or higher, Baruch found those with a student newspaper had higher four-year graduation rates. Journalism also inspires positive feelings of agency and motivation stemming from the respect students earn by writing for an audience of their peers. Those benefits are critical, especially coming out of Covid — when rigor dropped, communication skills withered and mental health suffered.
Being part of a student news team also builds appreciation and trust in journalism itself, combating disinformation in the face of withering reliable journalism, and establishing healthy news habits in a society where socioeconomic variables determine who’s informed versus uninformed.
Press Pass NYC has designed a scalable, systems-level solution to more equitable scholastic journalism opportunities which can be replicated in other cities and regions. If we don’t teach students how to spot the truth—and give them the chance to tell it—we risk losing a foundation to our society: free press.
A year-long fellowship program designed to develop a cohort of educators to start, lead and sustain journalism programs at their schools with free mentors and stipends.
Target Issues
Two semester-long programs each year for students from our partner schools designed to prepare students to assume leadership positions on their newly-formed student newspaper staff, with stipends.
Target Issues