Focus Junior, the Mondadori monthly designed to satisfy the curiosity of young readers with innovative, amusing and stimulating content that enables them to discover the world in a new and intelligent way, presents “Become a journalist”, a project aimed at attracting school-age children to the world of journalism and explaining the mechanisms behind the news.

“Become a journalist with Focus Junior” offers teachers a short and simple guide to stimulate and encourage pupils to create their own newspaper while, at the same time, exploiting the potential of new digital media.

The aim is to teach a new approach to education that is in line with the mission of Focus Junior to “have fun discovering the world”.

“With this project we want to give teachers an additional tool with which to draw even the most reluctant pupils into a love of writing. But we also want to stimulate children’s natural curiosity, spirit of observation and critical sense,” declared Sarah Pozzoli, the editor of Focus Junior. “ The class newspaper that will be created from this initiative will give the kids a lasting and tangible memory of the importance of working in a team to create something unique and wonderful of which they can be proud.”

The initiative, which has been developed in collaboration with the agency La Fabbrica, will run from March to May 2016 and is targeted at pupils in the last three years of primary school across Italy. Participating schools will be sent a journalist kit with a handbook outlining the know-how necessary to guide classes towards the production of their own newspaper.

The guide will also contain the answers to all the fundamental questions concerning how to attract children to the world of journalism: How an articles is created? What is a helm? Why photographs are important? How to distinguish between news that is true or false? Is it possible to conduct an investigation only using a smartphone? What does it mean to write for the web, and how is it different from writing for print and why is it important to find a way to be more visible on search engines? How do you start a blog or create an online newspaper? And how do you include multimedia content in them?

Each class will have until 30 May to submit their work to the editorial staff of Focus Junior, that, in September, will choose the best for publication in the magazine or on the web site.

The winning class will also be invited to spend an entire day in the editorial department of Focus Junior.

“Become a journalist” is just the first of many initiatives by Focus Junior for children and schools, aimed at making it possible to discover the importance of teamwork and, above all, understand how the nature of work is changing in the digital age.