What is the mission of your organization?
Our mission at Listen Up! is to encourage and facilitate a youth voice in the mass media, contributing to a culture of free speech and social responsibility.

What age, class, racial, religious, and ethnic groups do your organization work with?
Listen Up! seeks to create communication opportunities for youth who have traditionally been denied access to the public realm because of economic circumstances, incarceration or homelessness, or who are victims of prejudice because of color, creed or sexual orientation. Specifically, Listen Up! is a network of 60 youth media organizations nationwide whose young media makers are producing messages for a public service campaign that will be launched in 2001. By providing cash awards and organizational support to groups that work with our target youth populations, Listen Up! has created a forum, allowing youth to challenge the negative stereotypes they are too often assigned.

What are the main facilities, resources and services you make available to young people interested in working in media?
As technology continues to improve and prices drop, the ranks of youth media producers continue to grow. In order to effectively harness this new, creative energy, Listen Up! acted swiftly to create a national network of youth media producers. Through an interactive web page at www.ListenUp.org, our 2000 Demo Reel of youth-produced messages, and an aggressive distribution strategy we are an important resource for youth media organizations with limited time and budgets.

How would children and young people make contact with your organization?
Please vist our Web site for all of the information under "join us."

What made you originally want to start working with young people?
Television, magazines, and talk radio have increased their sensational coverage of youth crime. The stories reported suggest that our nation is in the grip of a teenage crime wave of unprecedented proportions. The overall message? That young people in America are anti-social, lazy, irresponsible and dangerous.

As a result of this negative media hype, adult reactions to adolescents are often negative. Even the adults who care about young people sometimes don't understand them. Some adults believe that adolescent problems are caused by adolescents themselves. Most adults do not recognize that there are much larger factors at work.

The past few years have seen a dramatic increase in teenagers incarcerated — even on death row. Just as it is wrong to assume that adolescents themselves are the problem, it's wrong to think that the solution is to punish, restrict or refuse to support youth. We are constantly searching for the mythical silver bullet that will wipe away our problems in one clean sweep. However, despite America's love for instant solutions, we will not find them by silencing and locking away our young people.

There are clear alternatives to engage youth to become full participants in a civil society and at that same time help adults view youth as an asset, and not a liability. Listen Up! is one such solution.

How are young people using new technologies to help them gain access to public forums and be more effective media makers?
In every way. The growth of young people in mediamaking is growing at an astronomical rate. At 60 sites and a couple thousand producers networked, we are barely scratching the surface of media production.

What do you see as the obstacles young producers of media face in gaining access to television, film, video, and print?
Funding is critical. Our target youth population, those youth who come from poorer communities or/and are of color do not have access to new technologies at home, in school or in their communities. Listen Up!, by providing small awards to local organizations, is helping to bridge that gap.

What's taking place today that is or will soon make access easier or harder for a greater number of young people?
Costs to technology are coming down and the quality is going up. Populations that have traditionally denied a right to use the means of communication in the past have much more access. I believe, of those groups, youth media is the fastest growing sector.

Do you believe there is bias in the dominant media toward young people and their interests and issues? What is it?
Absolutely.

How do you think the Internet and other technologies are influencing young media makers? What are your organization's success stories working with young media producers?
Listen Up! sites impact on local communities. In New Orleans for example, the Parish Health Department has created a program where NOVAC screens their PSAs at local health clinics. In Oregon, Sweet Talk Productions presented their work at the "Turning Point" national conference. "Turning Point" is a W.K. Kellogg project that supports policy changes and strategizes around common issues at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO).

What will be the most serious challenges facing young media journalists in the future?
Quality. Youth media producers need greater funding for long-term, sustainable programs that can sufficiently nurture these emerging artists. Youth media is still considered an "emerging field" despite the enormous gains that it has made in the past few years. We believe networks like Listen Up! gain strength through numbers of producers and organizations, drawing critical attention to this field.

What do you think can be done to make young people more media literate?
Media literacy at school and at home is critical. Parents need these new literacy skills at home. Production of media is fundamental, but it is only one component to a media literate young person.
 

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