Young Documentarians In Campaign To The End

Aspiring Students Document Presidential Election -- From Primaries To Denver To Jan. 20

by Lisa Caruso

Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008


Sitting around a long table, seven eighth-graders from the Kid Witness News team brainstormed with teacher Richard Carter over questions to ask convention-goers on this last day of the Democratic National Convention.

The tech-savvy class from Denver's Rachel B. Noel Middle School already covered the gathering on Tuesday using equipment provided by Panasonic, which sponsors a two-decade-old program that makes digital video technology available to students in the United States and abroad.

The 13-year-olds and Carter have been shooting video on the presidential campaign since the primaries, covering the local Democratic and Republican caucuses, and they will continue to do so through the swearing-in of the nation's 44th president in January. The students will enter their finished product in the program's international contest to choose the best Kid Witness News video.

Plotting their strategy for today, the students and Carter started with a natural subject -- education -- mulling over questions about whether people are satisfied with the Denver schools, the quality of the teachers, and even whether they get enough homework. After witnessing anti-abortion protests on Tuesday, Crystal Magana posed a question about the hot-button topic. Classmate Sevaun Alford suggested querying conventioneers about their views on "going green."

But the discussion took off when Kayan Cruz delved into illegal immigration, an issue of particular interest to nearly all of the young teens, including the two undocumented students in the class and the others who are U.S. citizens but whose parents are in the country illegally.

Kayan posed a sophisticated question about illegal workers that many adults are at a loss to answer: "Why would they [immigration opponents] want to send them back if they're doing most of the work that Americans wouldn't do anyway?" Salvador Camacho wants to find out convention-goers' opinions on the security fence that the Bush administration is building along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The class next turned its attention to reviewing the video they shot on Wednesday interviewing delegates and others in the Pepsi Center; the poor lighting particularly concerned Kayan and Donald Skalecke. Panasonic provided them with eight handheld digital video cameras that they take turns using -- alternating among themselves between interviewing people and shooting video of the interviews. The two students who will cover Barack Obama's acceptance speech tonight, Magana and Aldo Salinas, will use a Panasonic high-definition camera they proudly note is not even on the market yet.

Crystal and Aldo were both a little nervous, but like their classmates were excited to spend the day -- from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m., according to Carter -- downtown in the middle of the action.

Although many of the teens are in the program because of their interest in technology, Crystal wants to be a television news reporter. A self-possessed girl with bright pink shadow on her eyelids and a single streak of pink in her long, caramel-colored hair and a tiny diamond stud on the right side of her nose, Crystal says she wants to get into TV news "because I want people to look at me and listen to me."

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