Introducing Pressto: Making journalism accessible and digestible for kids

BY JANIECE CAMPBELL

An educational technology company is on the rise, on a mission to help children become more thoughtful, unbiased writers.

The first of its kind, Pressto is a writing and micro-journalism platform targeted at students between grade three to grade eight. The software teaches children to communicate more clearly while also teaching them to process and interpret information they see in the media. A fun and easy program to use, students are encouraged to do this by creating short magazines or newspapers on topics of their choice that can be printed out and folded into little books! Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, their very first placement was a high school in the community of North Preston, which has historical roots as the first African community in Canada and currently contains the highest concentration of Black people in the country.

Born out of the mind of media creative Daniel Stedman, his goal is to train the next generation of future journalists to be media literate.

No stranger to writing, Daniel’s origins began in 2003, where he started a digest magazine with his brother in Brooklyn, New York. Later, he launched Brooklyn Magazine, where he spent ten years as a publisher. With a passion for getting the youth involved in journalism, he sought to volunteer at high schools throughout the city. However, he had found that many school newspaper programs had been abandoned. For this reason, alongside his efforts in helping his kindergarten-aged son to become a better writer, was enough inspiration to create Pressto.

“The experience of learning and teaching writing is dreadful. You can’t just throw Microsoft Word, a program created for middle aged people to write books, in front of nine-year-old and expect them to be inspired. My personal North Star here is to create a new generation of young people that have more of a healthy relationship with the content that they consume but also to think critically about the content that they create,” says Daniel.

Utilizing AI technology, the platform is designed for youth to be consciously aware of what they put out into the world. With a sidebar containing a “positivity meter,” they are able to see visual feedback of how effective their writing is and how they can change it to become more powerful.

“There are billions of dollars being spent on combatting misinformation. We’re trying to do it through project-based learning. It’s as simple as having a kid write an opinion piece, then having them write a fact-based journalism piece. It could be on the same subject, such as their opinion about the greatest basketball player of all time, then facts about Michael Jordan, for example. When we have kids do both, they get a first-hand understanding of the difference between fact and opinion, which is not that complicated,” Daniel says.

Pressto has partnered with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, esteemed radio talk-show host and current full-time professor Karen Hunter, who aims to bring the technology all over the world, especially in underprivileged communities. Leading a scholarship program to gift Pressto software to five schools across the African Diaspora, schools in Jamaica and Ghana have already been selected. Three more schools will be chosen in upcoming months, though she already has her eyes set on potential schools in Brazil and Panama.

“The more we engage young people in true facts, being able to discern truth and fact and put them in the role of actually disseminating it, the less likely it is for them to be susceptible to the manipulations of social media and propaganda. I teach my students to question everything and make sure their facts are right. If this is foundational, then on social media, every headline they see, they’re going to start questioning them. If we can get people asking those kinds of questions, I feel like the future is bright,” says Karen.  

Still in its pre-launch era, Pressto is set to fully launch in September, just in time for the 2022-2023 school year. Until then, the team is continuing to carefully develop the app with eventual plans to create partnerships with well-regarded publishers, where students can get paid writing assignments through the program.

“We need young people to engage in discourse, storytelling, and facts. We need to train the next generation of journalists, but first, we have to get them excited about it. Journalism is dying, Pressto is the defibrillator,” Karen says.

Though Pressto is not available to the public at this time, feel free to visit their website www.joinpressto.com for more information.