Country of Residence
United States
Age
16
Project title
The Pressroom
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
The Pressroom is a student-led media network equipping middle schoolers with journalism skills, peer mentorship, and professional publishing opportunities to combat youth misinformation.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
https://www.instagram.com/suzannethepressroom/
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Growth (We’ve moved past the very first activities and are beginning to have consistent weekly or monthly impact)
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
I was scrolling through social media one evening when I kept seeing younger students reposting obvious fake news, AI-generated images, and wildly misleading headlines without a second thought. Middle schoolers are getting smartphones earlier than ever today, leaving them exposed to a relentless flood of digital noise before they ever receive a single lesson in media literacy or critical thinking. We spend so much time telling younger kids not to believe everything they read online, but nobody was actually teaching them how to verify sources or investigate facts for themselves. Middle school journalism programs have vanished due to budget cuts, which means these younger students rarely get a chance to build real research skills or voice their perspectives. I realized middle schoolers do not just need passively assigned media literacy worksheets; they need hands-on experience becoming the reporters themselves. I saw an incredible opportunity to connect these eager young students with experienced high school editors from award-winning publications who could serve as mentors. When we ran our very first workshop and saw how quickly the middle schoolers transformed from passive scrollers into passionate, curious interviewers, I knew this model could scale. That potential to protect and empower younger minds before they enter high school is what drove me to launch The Pressroom.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
Middle schoolers across our school district spend hours every day navigating algorithm-driven feeds, yet formal media literacy training is completely absent from middle school state standards and standard humanities curricula. While high schools may offer journalism electives, middle schools treat media literacy as an afterthought. This leaves 11- to 14-year-olds, who are at a crucial stage of cognitive and social development, completely defenseless against coordinated online misinformation, dangerous viral trends, and subtle digital manipulation. Without student-led newspapers or media clubs in local middle schools, students lack a structured, safe outlet to process local events, question claims, or practice objective writing. In our local community, this gap manifests directly: unverified rumors in student group chats frequently lead to school disruptions, interpersonal conflict, and heightened anxiety. Solving this matters because media literacy is not just an academic skill; it is a vital form of modern civic defense. When we leave middle schoolers without the ability to distinguish verified reporting from clickbait, we undermine their ability to make informed decisions as future voters and community leaders. Bridging this structural gap gives our youngest students the armor they need to navigate the digital world safely.
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
The Pressroom solves this problem by establishing structured, peer-led journalism chapters directly inside middle schools. Our operational backbone consists of 30 high school mentors recruited from award-winning high school publications. Every two weeks, our high school mentor team spends over five hours carefully planning curriculum slides, interactive exercises, and reporting assignments designed specifically for middle school learning styles. These preparations culminate in weekly one-hour chapter meetings held directly after school on middle school campuses. During these sessions, high school mentors walk students through core journalism concepts, including conducting primary interviews, verifying source credibility, writing objective leads, and identifying subtle bias in news coverage. Following the group lesson, mentors transition into one-on-one breakout groups with middle schoolers. This direct peer-to-peer structure creates a comfortable environment where younger students feel confident asking questions, pitching story ideas about their own school, and working through draft revisions line-by-line. Instead of writing articles that sit unread in Google Docs, middle schoolers take their finished pieces through a complete editorial pipeline. Mentors guide them through fact-checking, ethics checks, and final polish before publishing their work through our established regional media partnership. By immersing middle schoolers directly in the reporting and editing process, we transform passive social media consumers into active, critical thinkers who understand how information is built, verified, and shared.
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
Since launch, The Pressroom has directly impacted over 200 middle school students across our chapters, backed by more than 300 total hours of dedicated mentorship, curriculum development, and hands-on workshops. We have seen firsthand how taking on the role of a student reporter builds lasting intellectual confidence in young writers. The measurable change shows up directly in our students' academic growth and long-term path. Teachers and parents consistently report that middle schoolers in our program show remarkable improvement in their English classes, demonstrating sharper analytical writing, stronger research habits, and clearer argument structure. The shift in how they process information carries directly into their schoolwork. The most rewarding proof of our impact happens when our middle schoolers transition into high school. Students who went through The Pressroom consistently step up to join top-tier high school journalism programs, quickly taking on leadership roles and thriving in competitive editorial spaces. By introducing peer mentorship early, we build a continuous pipeline of critical thinkers who enter high school equipped to lead, spot misinformation, and use their voices with purpose.
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
Most media literacy programs rely on passive online modules or adult lectures that treat middle schoolers like passive targets of information. The Pressroom completely redefines this dynamic by building a near-peer mentorship ecosystem that meets younger students at their level. Instead of having teachers lecture about fake news, we deploy award-winning high school journalists who were in middle school just a few years ago. This narrow age gap creates immediate trust and relatability, making complex concepts like source verification and bias detection feel accessible and engaging rather than like an extra homework assignment. Another key innovation is our focus on real-world civic distribution for middle schoolers. While high school journalism programs are common, middle school journalism has been largely abandoned across public school districts. The programs that do exist usually confine student writing to internal bulletin boards or password-protected class drives. We break this boundary by giving middle schoolers a direct public platform through our established media partnerships. Middle schoolers see their investigative reporting and local perspectives published for a real audience outside their school walls. Finally, we innovate through our scalable, dual-benefit model. While middle schoolers gain critical media literacy, research skills, and academic confidence, our high school mentors gain hands-on leadership, editorial, and management experience. By bridging the gap between high school publications and middle school classrooms, we create a self-sustaining cycle of peer-led civic education that strengthens media literacy across an entire school district without requiring heavy administrative overhead or expensive third-party software.
How many people are on your team?
30
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
Our 31-member team includes high school mentors from award-winning publications, divided into specialized leads for copy editing, page design, investigative news writing, interviewing coaching, etc. As founder, I oversee expansion and partnerships while delegating chapter management to subject leads. Mentors draw directly on their national publishing experience to design curriculum modules and guide middle schoolers line-by-line, giving every team member full ownership over their specialty.
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
Over the next year, we will scale The Pressroom by expanding our physical reach and deepening our middle school chapters' real-world media exposure. A key initiative is launching an immersive field trip program, bringing our top middle school writers directly into professional newsrooms like the Los Angeles Times. By giving students a firsthand look at professional journalists, print facilities, and live editorial rooms in action, we will bridge the gap between classroom writing and real-world media careers. To support our expansion, we will build and ship physical chapter expansion toolkits to ten new middle schools across neighboring school districts. These toolkits will include ready-to-use lesson decks, interview guides, and editorial templates, making it seamless for teachers to launch a club on their campus. We will also expand our mentor network by recruiting 15 additional high school editors from regional school publications, ensuring our one-on-one feedback ratio stays strong as membership grows. Finally, we will secure dedicated software grants for graphic design and publishing platforms, allowing middle school chapters in lower-income schools to design professional-grade layouts. By the end of the year, we will curate, edit, and print our first biannual regional student anthology, distributing physical copies to celebrate our young reporters' voices.
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
To activate other high schoolers and middle school students, I leverage my experience as the sports editor of the award-winning high school yearbook, the Cayuse. Leading a section in a recognized publication showed me how journalism builds leadership and purpose. I use that credibility to recruit talented staff, pitching The Pressroom as a chance to pass down technical skills and make a tangible civic impact. So far, we have engaged over 200 middle schoolers and 30 high school mentors by grounding our outreach in three changemaking pillars: authentic youth agency, direct peer mentorship, and real-world publishing. We organize interactive middle school visits, co-host workshops with teachers, and run social media campaigns highlighting published student work. High school journalists who join our team step up as community leaders, designing lessons and guiding middle school writers line-by-line through interview techniques and draft revisions. By showing potential recruits that their journalism skills can protect younger students from online misinformation, we turn passive student writers into active mentors. Middle school participants, in turn, become advocates on their own campuses, recruiting classmates to join chapters and bringing critical media literacy into their everyday school conversations.
