nextLI high school video contest and inaugural research survey

nextLI’s video contest invites students to document their interactions with culture, race, ethnicity and gender through the lens of their high school experience. In this category, students are asked to highlight both the challenges and progress toward building a more inclusive school environment.

Members of the public will get a chance to pick the semi-finalists by voting on the nextLI website for their favorite videos. The students whose videos make it into the top five will be invited to spend a day with Newsday’s award winning video journalists to produce their final entry. Remember to forward this link to the storytellers in your life for a chance to share their high school experience.

Newsday is partnering with Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism to sponsor this year’s Broadcast Awards for Senior High known as BASH. Over the past two years, BASH has recognized outstanding work by Long Island high school students in broadcast journalism and video production.

Finalists will be announced on Friday, May 3, 2019 at the BASH awards ceremony at Stony Brook University.

We recently launched our inaugural research survey to get a better understanding of the next generation of Long Islanders. Over 1800 participants between the ages of 18 and 34 will be answering questions about housing, diversity, civic leadership, and their overall attitude about the region’s future. The survey results will help give us a snapshot of the generation that will soon be taking over the reins and how they envision the Long Island of tomorrow.

Building a just LI: nextLI joined ERASE Racism at their region-wide discussion “How Do We Build a Just Long Island?” Catch up on what happened at the events here. We’d like to invite you to be part of this important conversation by emailing us your answer to this question: What would a more inclusive Long Island look like and how would the region benefit?

Long Island through a lens, ‘whitely’: Patchogue resident Frank Pomata shares this riveting life story about growing up on Long Island in the 1970’s. He talks about his personal encounters with racism and running into a bully later in life.

• Reversing the talent drain on Long Island: The Middle Market Alliance of Long Island brought out the heavy weights at a meeting to reverse the talent drain in the region. The discussion aimed to understand the flight of young people from Long Island, why they’re leaving and how to keep them here.

We’re always on the lookout for articles, websites and projects to inspire our work. Here are a few links that caught our attention since our last update:

• Researchers at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas found that uncivil comments on news stories can cloud a visitor’s perspective of a news site — even if more civil comments are presented first.
• Long Island updates: The region is well-known, but its attractions are not and there’s a tech talent shortage squeezing Long Island businesses.
• For Americans under the age of 40, the 21st century has resembled one long recession. Their incomes are flat. Their wealth is down, David Leonhardt writes in The Fleecing of Millennials.
• The case for community-centered journalism.