NYC Council expands funding for student journalism programs, including Marble Hill school

The New York City Council announced the allocation of roughly $280,000 toward training the next generation of young journalists, further funding a program that has already helped one Marble Hill School launch its first student newsroom.

The investment for fiscal year 2027 will expand Journalism for All, run by nonprofit NYC Youth Journalism Coalition, which helps schools launch credit-bearing journalism courses and student publications. It also marks the second round of funding for United Charter High School for the Humanities, located on the John F. Kennedy Campus at 99 Terrace View Ave. in Marble Hill, which was part of a pilot cohort when Journalism for All kicked off last year.

The investment includes $150,000 for all 30 schools that participated in the pilot, with each receiving a $5,000 grant. A sum of $90,000 will also go to New York City Public Schools and $40,000 was allocated for The Bell, the nonprofit that houses the NYC Youth Journalism Coalition.

Council member Eric Dinowitz, a former teacher who chairs the council’s education committee, said journalism offers students an opportunity to demonstrate skills that cannot always be captured on a standardized test.

“I’ve long spoken about how our kids are more than just a test score, and initiatives like this really allow our students to do the rigorous work we expect of all of our students,” Dinowitz said, pointing to the program as a chance to investigate complex subjects, consider different perspectives and produce work students can be proud of.

The investment comes as journalism offerings are expanding notably across the school system. During the 2025-26 school year, 135 schools offered at least one journalism course — up 50% from the previous year. A reported 5,685 students completed those courses — a 76% jump from the previous year, according to data from the New York City Department of Education.

The goal of the student journalism initiative, said CJ Sanchez, the youth journalism coalition’s director, is not simply to create more extracurricular newspapers.

Journalism for All is designed with a full-year high school curriculum developed with the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and training for educators who may have little or no professional journalism experience. Participating schools then receive support building student publications, along with access to internships and startup money for equipment, reporting trips and other newsroom expenses.

Making journalism part of the school day, Sanchez said, also opens the opportunity to students who may be unable to stay for an after-school club because they work or care for younger siblings.

Sanchez said journalism programs can often be difficult to sustain because of funding constraints. But creating an actual course, Sanchez said, gives the program “staying power” when schools are making budget decisions.

At United Charter High School for the Humanities, journalism teacher Aaron Pinnix helped students publish the school’s first newspaper last school year.

Students wrote articles, conducted interviews and took photographs for the publication, called “Highlighting Unique Minds,” a play on the school’s humanities focus. The first issue, published in June, featured stories like “Preparing for Regents Exams: Why Improvement Matters” and “When Help Becomes Harm: AI’s Impact on Student Learning.”

This year, Pinnix hopes to publish four issues and begin developing a student video news program.

“It’s giving the whole school a feeling of community,” Pinnix said. Students pitch stories and work through reporting, writing, revision and photography while learning concepts including verification, independence, accountability and bias.

Principal Lillian Lopez said the program fits the school’s effort to expose students to careers they may not otherwise encounter while encouraging them to become more inquisitive about their surroundings.

She also sees value beyond students who eventually enter journalism.

“We’re functioning in this world where news kind of flows super quickly, and they’re on all these social media platforms, and they’re getting this stream of media all the time,” Lopez said. She wants students to understand both how reporting works and “the ethics behind journalism.”

The investment also arrives as New York State moves toward a new graduation system built around its “Portrait of a Graduate” framework, which will replace Regents exams as a graduation requirement. Instead of passing a set of tests, students will be required to demonstrate skills such as critical thinking, communication and creativity through projects, internships and other hands-on work.

Each district will decide how to put the framework into practice, and the city has not yet announced implementation plans. However, supporters of Journalism for All argue reporting naturally requires many of those skills.

Dinowitz said that shift could change what schools prioritize.

“Whatever gets assessed gets investment,” he said, arguing that schools have historically been incentivized to devote resources to Regents preparation.

If the system begins putting greater weight on portfolio-based work, journalism, speech and debate, and arts programs, he said, schools may have more reason to invest in them.

For Sanchez, the council funding represents another step toward making those opportunities less dependent on which high school a student happens to attend.

“It took teachers standing up and saying ‘I want this in my school,’” Sanchez said. “It took students demanding this and making clear that this was something that they are seeking and something that they deserve.”