Lessons learned from co-creating the news with young people
Blog Foxton gave over the news agenda to a group of Preston youngsters aged 12 to 16
Good afternoon,
There’s much agonising over what young people want from news providers and outlets, you can go down rabbit holes yourself in research and reports. All of it valid. But the big question for me is what are you doing about it?
This week’s digest is a digest of what I learned from co-creating the news with a group of very talented young people.
Blog Preston is not a publication which specifically targets young people - although I know they read it.
As part of our 15 year anniversary I wanted to see if we could involve young people in some way. After a few false starts, we got something going…
Over the period of Wednesday afternoons for five weeks myself, Kate and Alice from Team BP have been fortunate enough to spend time working with Lucie, Skyy, Imogen, Emily and Evie.
Here’s some thoughts…
Don’t over-plan. One of the first things Sam from the Foxton, who has years of experience of working with young people, said was something I was not expecting. The group were coming to us fresh from the classroom. His advice was to ensure you had enough structure but to give the young people freedom as to how to do things. This is the opposite to any teaching/lecturing/training I’ve done before where you try to plan and prepare to utmost knowledge and materials to cover every eventuality. Have an end goal, but be flexible about the path it takes to get there.
Give ownership. Linked to this, we looked at how we could ensure the group felt like they owned the sessions and the project/idea. We let them come up with a logo for the name Blog Foxton (big props to Skyy who just went straight on ChatGPT and smashed one out!). It was also up to the group which subject we should focus on for creating their story.
We also had a dedicated section of the site (a new category) set up to be the Blog Foxton section and asked 3ManFactory who we work with to create a custom header for it as part of it. All their work appears here too.
Go where they are. The group already met at 4pm on a Wednesday, in the Foxton in Avenham. Rather than make them come somewhere else, we went to them. It also meant we were in a space where they felt comfortable and took us out of our comfort zone, I think they respected that.
Have fun. It’s not a classroom, it’s not structured education - it’s a learning experience. We created videos, we shared funny stories and anecdotes, we took them out and about, we got Popeyes chicken, there were biscuits and they schooled us on words, slang and meaning of being a young person in Preston in 2025.
Play to their strengths. We got them writing, interviewing, drawing, filming, taking pictures, speaking to people. Within the group some were natural at asking questions, others were more reserved and comfortable writing up interviews rather than doing it. We challenged (by making them do all the different elements) but also when it came to pulling the story together for publication we let them also play to their strengths they naturally had as editors, writers, interviewers. Like every newsroom I’ve ever worked in, it’s always a team effort.
It wasn’t about journalism, it was about stories and people. Yes we touched on who, what, where, why, when and how as a concept but ultimately we were teaching them about telling stories, asking questions, working as a team, questioning the world around them and plenty more.
A happy by-product of the sessions, the report they produced investigating empty shops in the city centre was our second most-engaged with story for October on Blog Preston and got a big debate going on social media too from our readers.
It’s been a fantastic experience to work with the group from the Foxton and I hope they are super proud of everything they’ve done. We’ll be heading back in early December to give them a printed certificate (apparently records of achievement at school are still a thing these days, I thought it would be an app but hard copies are needed) and share some food with them too.
I know other publications have young reporter schemes and other initiatives. It really is worth doing and we’re looking at how we can potentially resource doing more or similar sessions in the future.
And a huge thank you to the Foxton for supporting us and being willing to try something different too, to Sam and Ramona for helping to support the sessions and to all those who were willing to be interviewed and speak to our young journos.
Next week the digest is back to the usual format of three or four useful and interesting reads which have crossed my feed. If you have anything to share drop me a line on ed@almaonline.co.uk
Have a great rest of the week.
Keep going.
Ed