The “Center 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 Finnish association has been at the forefront of this work.
“Among 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 Finnish 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.”
The Finnish Newspapers Association received the designation for its Newspapers in Education programme, which began in 1964 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. It has been instrumental in helping shape the country’s media literacy curriculum while championing freedom of speech and reading itself. Most recently, it attracted one in every five of the country’s 15-year-olds to a national critical writing contest.
“The biggest winner is Finnish society, which benefits from competent and informed citizens who learn to use media content that helps them achieve success in life,” said Jukka Holmberg, Executive Director of the Finnish Newspapers Association.” With the help of newspapers, we can vividly show the importance of press freedom for true democracy.”
Only two countries have continuously been doing this work for longer than Finland: the United States (starting in 1961) and Denmark (1962), and Finland was among the first to contribute to the global work of news in the class, starting in 1991 when then NIE manager Piro-Riitta Puro help found WAN-IFRA’s own international committee for this work.
The induction took place during a ceremony held in Helsinki on Thursday as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of Finnish NIE.
“We believe this activity continues to provide a crucial service to the young in such an increasingly multimedia world where content can arrive in a digital whirl that can defy true understanding,” said Valtteri Niiranen, CEO at Federation of the Finnish Media Industry. “We are proud of the work of the past 50 years and look forward to the exciting new variations to come.”
Other newspaper and news media associations will receive the designation later this this year, with all to be honoured in a special ceremony during the World Publishing Expo in Amsterdam.
For more on WAN-IFRA’s programmes for youth engagement and news literacy can be found here.
