Submitted Date: 8/18/2011 2:49:01 PM
Inquiry ID: 20624
Requested Amount: $18,000
Project Total: $25,000
Project Title:
This project proposes establishing a news website devoted to the coverage of arts events by young people (ages 12-25) and training high school journalists to cover those events.
Purpose:
This project would introduce arts journalism to selected high school in the Charlotte area and would train them in various aspects of covering the arts. It would also create an arts news website (www.charlotteartsbeat.com) under the auspices of the Interscholastic Online News Network (ISONN, http://isonn.com) for the work that these students produce. As part of ISONN, this work would also be made available to other high school news websites around the nation.
Activities
Development and establishment of a scholastic arts news website. This site would be a specially designed WordPress-based site that would handle content for the coverage of art events and activities. Part of the design would include an arts calendar, an audio player and a video player. The site would be managed by an experienced college journalism student at the University of Tennessee.
The content focus of this site would be arts activities and interests of young people (ages 12-25) in the Charlotte area. It might include (but would not be limited to) the following:
- a collaborative web-based events calendar for school-based arts events; something that all schools and organizations in the area could contribute to
- information on arts education for high school students (scholarships, college programs, summer internships, etc.)
- writing contests for local coverage
- photography contests
- profiles of up-and-coming student artists
- “groupons” for arts events (offer discounts to students attending events)
- affiliations with arts organizations/foundations
- live streaming/tweeting from music and other arts events
Two arts journalism workshops
These one-day workshops would be for high school journalism students selected for this program. They would include technical training on the mechanics of posting to the website and content training on reporting on various aspects of the arts. One workshop would be in the fall, and another in the spring.
Both would be in the Charlotte area and would invite local arts experts and practitioners to be part of the program.
Need and uniqueness
As arts activities and events received less attention from journalists and news outlets, the arts scene of young people is almost completely ignored. This proposal seeks to correct that by focusing its efforts toward creating content about what young people are doing. The second benefit, obviously, is that of training young journalists to understand the scope and variety of arts journalism and the opportunities it offers to create interesting and compelling stories.
