Dutch News Media Association honoured for youth engagement excellence
The "Centre of Youth Engagement Excellence" designation honours newspaper associations that have a deep, long-term commitment and devote resources to news literacy and youth engagement, and the Dutch association has been at the forefront of this work.
"One of our core values is assuring that new generations understand how news works and appreciate the importance of press freedom," said Dr Aralynn McMane, Executive Director for Youth Engagement and News Literacy for WAN-IFRA. "The education programme run by the Netherlands association has consistently done important work in this area for more than a generation and continues to innovate with a strong commitment to the future, and we are very pleased to grant them this designation."
NDP Nieuwsmedia received the designation for its "Nieuws in de klas" programme (News in the classroom), which began in 1976 with a nationwide programme that taught teachers how to use print editions as supplemental texts in all kinds of classes, from language to history and even mathematics. Today, Nieuws in de klas offers a cutting-edge "Digital News Collage" experience as well as multi-platform access to a multitude of services that emphasize the important role of news in education and connects the classroom environment with the outside world.
Nieuws in de klas also has been able to help other countries get started in this work, notably in Macedonia through a project with the European Journalism Centre.
Tom Nauta, Director of NDP Nieuwsmedia, said: "Publishers realize the future of the news industry largely depends on new generations. Reading and understanding the news is, however, a competence young people have to acquire. It needs to be part of their education. That is why Dutch publishers have been supporting our work for almost forty years now."
Only four countries have continuously been doing this work for longer than The Netherlands: The United States (starting in 1961), Denmark (1962), Finland (1964) and Norway (1976).
The induction took place during a ceremony held in Amsterdam on Tuesday evening. Other newspaper and news media associations will receive the designation later this year, with all to be honoured on 13 October during the opening ceremony of the World Publishing Expo (http://www.wan-ifra.org/events/world-publishing-expo-2014) in Amsterdam, the largest global trade exhibition for the news publishing and media industry.
For more on WAN-IFRA's programmes for youth engagement and news literacy can be found here.