Calling all budding reporters in Welwyn Hatfield (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

Calling all budding reporters in Welwyn Hatfield

5:00pm Friday 19th June 2009 in Search

STUDENTS at Welwyn and Hatfield secondary schools are being given the rare opportunity to see their work presented to the House of Commons.

The 'myNEWS' competition will be launched this week by Welwyn Hatfield MP Grant Schapps, supported by the Welwyn Hatfield Review, encouraging pupils to get involved in their community by making their own news reports about the issues that concern them.

Students will work in teams and be required to complete the news reports in video format.

The Tory MP will then invite the top five reporters and their classes to the Houses of Parliament where their videos will be screened.

The Welwyn and Hatfield Review are showing our support by hosting some of the videos generated by the particpants on our website. Our reporter Alexandra Barham has also agreed to hold workshops with the students helping them to craft stories while providing some useful words of advice.

Participants have the freedom to choose the topics they want to cover. These can vary from interviewing interesting people, such as a local celebrity, to focusing on a particular issue such as bullying in schools.

The winning team will receive prizes, the details of which have not been finalised yet.

Mr Schapps said: "I really hope schools will become involved in this project. I think the future will be full of citizen journalists who dictate the news agenda, which is why this project holds such promise.

"If it is successful, we may well roll it out across the country involving national youth groups."

Packs of information about the project will be sent to all schools in the area.

The scheme is scheduled to start at the beginning of the new school year in September and end late October.