A letter from our Civil Wrongs coordinator

June 14, 2024

Dear Reader,

When talking about youth crime in Memphis, few take the time to ask youth for solutions. As part of an annual service project, my colleagues and I at Report for America wanted to change that.

Report for America (RFA) is a program that places  journalists in newsrooms across the country. It subsidizes my salary here at the Institute for Public Service Reporting along with that of several other journalists in Memphis.

In return, RFA corps members are required to complete an annual service project to give something back to their communities.

Laura Kebede-Twumasi

This year, two other Memphis corps members and I spent 10 weeks teaching news reporting skills to youth. It’s a repeat collaboration with The Collective Blueprint, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing socioeconomic mobility for young adults by teaching job skills.

When we asked for story pitches from student leaders, we quickly got a clear winner: What do youth in Memphis think will help reduce crime?  

Student leaders in the workshop interviewed RedZone Ministries Men's Ministry Coordinator Lee Wilkins (center) to learn how community organizations help youth manage conflict. (Credit: RedZone Ministries)

It first came with some myth debunking: While youth crime has recently increased at alarming rates, people 17 and younger are not committing the majority of crimes in Memphis. Then, we came up with a list of community organizations, politicians and academics we could consult to get more context on the problem. All of that led to questions we posed to young people about what could be done to reduce crime.

You can read about the solutions they proposed in our resulting story, written by the student journalists in our workshop.

This was the first story that any of the student leaders had produced. It came amid weeks of learning about news literacy, interviewing techniques, news writing, photography, and crafting a story pitch. Along the way, we noticed a greater curiosity growing in their discussions about what it takes to go past surface-level answers to complex questions. 

This is the second year that my fellow Memphis RFA corps members and I have led this workshop. We even had one student return to take the class again so he could sharpen his research and writing skills.

Not every journalist comes through a university journalism program. We want to create ways to expose this career to people who may not have access to traditional channels. And even if none of them pursue journalism professionally, they now have some news literacy, research and writing tools they can apply to any job.

And that is just as relevant to public service journalism as the stories we write. 

Laura Kebede-Twumasi

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The Institute is led by director Marc Perrusquia, who worked nearly 30 years as an investigative reporter at The Commercial Appeal. He’s the author of the 2018 book “A Spy In Canaan,’’ which exposed civil rights photographer Ernest Withers’ secret life as an FBI informant and inspired the 10-part podcast “Ernie’s Secret” and the documentary film “The Picture Taker,’’ to be released on PBS in January.

The Institute’s associate director, David Waters, worked more than 30 years at The Commercial Appeal and another four at The Washington Post. He is revered as Memphis’s best news writer and is beloved for his work exploring faith, child poverty and education

Laura Kebede-Twumasi is a Report for America corps member. She recently hosted and wrote WKNO public television’s special “History, Justice and the Journalists” on unresolved civil rights crimes in the Memphis area. She previously covered education inequities for Chalkbeat Tennessee and local government and religion for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.