Here are lessons learned from News Decode
Global News in English: News Decoder has been a return to roots a startup with slim financial returns that belie both its social worth and the joy of working with youth
These young people will be holding the reins of power.
Other lessons I can draw from News Decoder that a young person might find useful:
1. Hard work can provide joys that money cannot buy. It’s a cliche, for sure, but one worth living. It can be next to impossible for a young person to see beyond the glitz and glitter that our media — entertainment, advertising, news, social media platforms — peddle in the interest of making a buck. Much of it is fake, but the allure is powerful.
It takes a strong will to swim against the tide of mass consumption, and sometimes young people need elders’ support if they are to stand by their principles.
2. Despite all the gloom and doom around us, many individuals are keen to support a nonprofit with an abstract, even wooly educational mission that aims to enrich its community intellectually, not financially.
I’m thinking of News Decoder’s donors, correspondents, academic partners, board members, advisors, interns and staff — all of whom have given so much more than they have received, in the interest of building a community of empathetic individuals committed to enhancing global understanding.
3. The news industry may have a business-model problem, but there is still ample interest in the news as a tool that can foster democracy.
The young people we work with at News Decoder are not the jaundiced purveyors of bias, driven above all by an insatiable quest to make money, who run so many news outlets in our polarized world. Youth are old enough to grasp the existential threats their forebearers have bequeathed to them, and they want to do something about it.
