Youth Reporting Institute

Each summer, WUNC hires a diverse team of high schoolers, gives them microphones and trains them to tell us stories about their community. It’s been a majority-minority reporting team in each of its 8 years. Youth Reporters are paid, and for many, this is their first job that doesn’t involve a deep-fat fryer or manual labor. WUNC staff host weekly career development sessions (with pizza and soda) to talk about working in public media. In 2018, youth produced stories about mass shootings, mental health, housing insecurity and why so many Hispanics in our community drop out of high school.