“Our ‘Center of Youth Engagement Excellence’ designation honours initiatives that have a deep, long-term commitment and devote resources to news literacy and youth engagement,” said Vincent Peyrègne, CEO of WAN-IFRA. "ZiS has been running since 1995 and in 2016 alone has involved more than 100,000 students."
Nadja Vaskovich, CEO of ZiS noted that “although Austria is among the richest countries in the world, one in five Austrian teenagers cannot properly understand, use and reflect on written texts according to the latest OECD PISA results, Therefore, ZiS’s efforts are more important than ever – concerning not only the faith of the newspaper industry, but the future of the country.”
Gerald Grünberger, CEO of VÖZ, concurred, pointing out that “ZiS is Austria’s largest private initiative enhancing media and reading literacy of children and young people on a national level. The programme is supported by almost all of the country’s print media and promotes our democracy.”
ZiS has developed a variety of different projects. For example, all Austrian schools are encouraged to participate in ZiS’s Newspaper Project and to order free newspapers for four weeks. Hence, the Austrian newspaper publishers reach about ten percent of all the Austrian pupils throughout all grades and all kinds of schools. ZiS also offers trainings for teachers and student teachers on how to use newspapers and journals in class in the context of media literacy. Journalists give them insights on how newspapers work – from September to June 2016 ZiS trained nearly 500 teachers and students.
Austria’s ZiS is the 16th initiative to be designated a Center of Youth Engagement Excellence. The others include: the Newspaper Association of America’s American Press Institute, Asociación Nacional de la Prensa (ADP) in Chile, Danske Medier in Denmark, the Finnish Newspapers Association, the Hungarian Publishers Association, the Serikat Penerbit Suratkabar Pusat (SPS) in Indonesia, Mediebedriftenes Landsforening in Norway, NDP Nieuwsmedia in the Netherlands, SPQR, SPQN and ARPEJ in France, Associacão Nacional de Jornais in Brazil, Bundesverband Deutscher Zeitungsverleger in Germany, Nihon Shinbun Kyokai in Japan, Andiarios in Colombia, Lapresse.be (Journaux Francophone Belges), and the Korean Association of Newspapers. Details about all the centers can be found here.
The induction took place at the 2016 News Publishing Expo in Vienna and was followed by the 2016 WAN-IFRA Youth Engagement and News Literacy Committee Briefing this week in Vienna, hosted and supported by the ZIS and the Austrian Newspaper Association. The professional focus of the Vienna meeting was the latest challenges related to digital news content and sharing best practises related to news in education, media literacy and a better understanding of media.
