What up doe,
When I started this role as Engagement Editor of BridgeDetroit, I was channeling a lot of what I learned while teaching middle school math and English in the city. No, not the profanity-laden insults students hurled at me when I told them they need to read every single day, but lessons about patience, about being a better listener and about not believing I knew more about people’s lives and their struggles than they did. The biggest lesson I took away was, “listen to the kids.”
Then in the spring, I went to an American Press Institute conference that was all about how youth can collaborate with newsrooms like ours and make the work more impactful. Weeks after the API conference, we learned that BridgeDetroit had actually been given a grant specifically to engage with young people and put into practice the principles we had learned about in the seminar.
We’ve been focused on youth engagement for the bulk of 2026.
Education reporter Micah Walker and I visited over a dozen high school classes earlier in the year to talk about journalism and ask students how they feel about the direction the city is headed in. Many of those same students took our Youth Engagement Survey (if you’re 13-19, you can still take it here.) The goal was simply to empower Detroit teens to shape their own narrative of the city, its victories, its losses and the opportunities they see or don’t see here in the near future.
More than 400 students have since taken that survey and given us insights into how they see city government, local news media, career readiness and job opportunities, public safety, infrastructure and more. I’ve personally learned so much from reading through the results and talking to students about it. And it has shaped the type of coverage we have been doing since and made it so much easier to find young people to interview for stories where their voices are key.
Aside from the survey, we started working with a group of young people, our BridgeDetroit Youth Ambassadors, to produce videos spreading awareness of our news and civic info to their fellow teens in the city. While I certainly forgot how difficult it was to teach kids new skills, my passion for making sure young people have avenues to express themselves is still alive and well.
Thank you for your hard work this summer, Zyana, Kyndall and Justin. Check out Instagram to see their work as it comes out!
Now that we’re nearing the end of this grant period – and school is back in session – we’ve published our Civic Engagement Guide, a printed or digital zine designed to help teens who want to be more involved in civic life learn where and how to get involved.
I’m uniquely aware that one day these young people will be running things, mostly because I continue to see my former students during these school visits. I want them all to be equipped with the knowledge to make good decisions. More than that, I want them to know how important it is that they be confident enough in themselves to make decisions and voice opinions even if the adults in the room disagree with them or don’t understand.
API is helping us to make that possible, so I definitely want to thank them. I also want to thank all the young people who took the time to talk to a small news team about what they want to see when they become the adults in the room.
Sincerely,
Bryce Huffman
Engagement Editor, BridgeDetroit
Note: This project was made possible by an American Press Institute grant with funds from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
