MOCOYOJO

Journalists deliver stories on KRXA radio


Madeline Parker, Gabe GoLub, Hannah Egar, Rory Dismukes,
Peter Funt, Mitchell Bend, Jeff Pawling.


Six student journalists from the MoCoYoJo program were guests on KRXA radio Dec. 31, and delivered previews of news stories they have researched and written for publication in early January in The Monterey County Herald.

Monterey County Young Journalists is a joint program of the Lyceum organization and Peter Funt, and was co-sponsored by The Herald and KSBW. 

In all, 31 students from a dozen high schools took part in the program's inaugural semester.  Most workshops were conducted at The Herald's newsroom, with guidance from the paper's executive editor Joe Livernois.  An additional session was held at the studios of KSBW, with help from the station's news director Lawton Dodd.

MoCoYoJo was created by Funt, whose syndicated columns appear regularly in The Herald, in effort to fill the gap caused by cutbacks in journalism courses at many local schools.  A column last April in The Boston Globe lead to discussions with Lyceum and the launch of the program in October.

"As budgets are cut, electives such as journalism are often the first things to go," said Funt. "Although not a substitute for a full semester in the classroom, we were able to introduce students to both print and electronic journalism, and perhaps inspire some students to pursue further studies in the news business."

For their final reporting assignments, students picked topics, conducted interviews and wrote news stories. The best reports were selected for publication in The Herald as well as on this site. (Stories were produced independently by the students and were not part of The Herald's normal editing and fact-checking process.)

Herald city editor Dave Kellogg tells MoCoYoJo students
how stories are selected for the next day's newspaper.

Stories by the students will be published on this site as soon as they appear in The Herald.