New interview: Leanne Yoon Wants To Connect Student Journalists

A journalism student in South Korea has ambitious goals for helping her peers in the field

During the more than four-year run of The Journalism Salute, we've interviewed a very impressive group of student journalists who have left me feeling like the future of journalism will be in good hands.

The latest of those is Leanne Yoon, a junior at Daegu International School in South Korea. Not only is Leanne the co-editor-in-chief of her school's newspaper Jets Flyover, she's a writer for The Nutgraf (a student journalism newsletter) and perhaps most significantly, founded High School Press Central, a platform and repository for high school student journalists to connect and share best practices.

When I covered minor league hockey from 1999 to 2002, I started a News Reporters Network to connect reporters who were scattered all over the country. It was a good resource for all of us on a small scale. What Leanne is doing is bigger, better, and more ambitious.

Here's how Leanne explained what she's trying to do

"With Jets Flyover, I think I was very lucky because we had all the pieces. We had a passionate advisor (Jefferson Lipsky). We had an equally passionate editors-in-chief and also a really strong team, and we also had resources from past years that we could base everything off of. But while I was talking to other international school students, I realized that other schools may not have all of these elements.

I worked with my advisor to make all the lesson plans and experiences and turn them into resources that everyone anywhere in the world can use. I noticed a lot of resources were centered toward teachers. I do understand that teachers can give their students resources, but as students, we have our own pain points that we want addressed and sometimes that doesn't carry through if it's an adult delivering the content.

So I really wanted to address that gap in the student journalism world and create resources targeted specifically for students, though advisors can also use them."

There are plenty of resources, as well as a Discord server and a book that Leeann wrote, The High School Journalist Handbook. If you're a student journalist who is interested in learning more, visit hspresscentral.com or e-mail hspresscentral@gmail.com

Leeanne also talked about stories she's worked on, including one about deepfakes and another about a fencer with a fascinating backstory. And she discussed her diverse living experiences and interests (which include music and public speaking), how she handles her leadership role, challenges related to press freedom limitations, and why she considers it important to leave a legacy.

Hope you'll listen!

Upcoming guests:

March 25: Denise Watson, longtime features writer and editor, currently with WHRO Public Media reminisces about the memorable stories she's written, often on the subject of race and history.

April 1: Lola Claire, a student journalist and editor-in-chief of Hilltop Views, the student newspaper at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, which was just awarded a solutions journalism grant to broaden their coverage of mental health.