The Journalism Salute: Leanne Yoon, Journalism Student, Daegu International School, South Korea

On this episode, we're joined by Leanne Yoon. Leanne is the co-editor in chief of the Jets Flyover, the student news website of Daegu International School in South Korea, where she's in her junior year.

Leanne also just started writing a column for Nutgraf News, a student journalism newsletter, and she founded High School Press Central, whose goal is to make student journalism accessible to all by connecting high school journalists across the world to share ideas, resources, and practices.

Leanne discussed her diverse living experiences and interests (which include music and public speaking), how she handles her leadership role, challenges related to press freedom limitations, and why she considers it important to leave a legacy.

Words from Mark Simon

During the more than four-year run of The Journalism Salute, we've interviewed a very impressive group of student journalists who have left me feeling like the future of journalism will be in good hands.

The latest of those is Leanne Yoon, a junior at Daegu International School in South Korea. Not only is Leanne the co-editor-in-chief of her school's newspaper Jets Flyover, she's a writer for The Nutgraf (a student journalism newsletter) and perhaps most significantly, founded High School Press Central, a platform and repository for high school student journalists to connect and share best practices.

When I covered minor league hockey from 1999 to 2002, I started a News Reporters Network to connect reporters who were scattered all over the country. It was a good resource for all of us on a small scale. What Leanne is doing is bigger, better, and more ambitious.

Podcast snippets ✂️

"With Jets Flyover, I think I was very lucky because we had all the pieces. We had a passionate advisor (Jefferson Lipsky). We had an equally passionate editors-in-chief and also a really strong team, and we also had resources from past years that we could base everything off of. But while I was talking to other international school students, I realized that other schools may not have all of these elements.

I worked with my advisor to make all the lesson plans and experiences and turn them into resources that everyone anywhere in the world can use. I noticed a lot of resources were centered toward teachers. I do understand that teachers can give their students resources, but as students, we have our own pain points that we want addressed and sometimes that doesn't carry through if it's an adult delivering the content.

So I really wanted to address that gap in the student journalism world and create resources targeted specifically for students, though advisors can also use them."

Interested students can e-mail Leanne at hspresscentral@gmail.com