WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO

AND STATE HIGH SCHOOL JOURNALISTS PRESENT

“ THE WAR PROJECT ”

Wisconsin Public Radio will feature the work of four up-and-coming journalists when it presents The War Project on Sunday, November 11, at 2:00 p.m.

In southeast Wisconsin the one-hour special will be broadcast on IDEAS 90.7 WHAD-FM. It will also be available on the streaming and archive services of Wisconsin Pubic Radio at www.wpr.org.

The War Project first took shape in April of this year, when Wisconsin Public Radio and the Educational Communications Board issued a statewide call to high school speech, theater and media departments.  The two broadcast services were collaborating on a special program coinciding with director Ken Burns' highly anticipated World War II documentary The War, currently airing on public television.  They were looking for promising young journalists to interview people personally affected by that conflict with the goal of presenting their work in multiple media formats.

After a month-long search, four high school students were chosen and in June they began meeting in weekly sessions with Wisconsin Public Radio producer and technical director Joe Hardtke.

The four student producers are Jake Pryde from Shabazz City High School in Madison, Justin Wiemer from Nicolet High School in Glendale, Natalia Hokin from Madison East High School in Madison, and Joe Meeker from Waunakee High School in Waunakee.

Under Hardtke’s guidance, the students sought out guests from around the country, documenting stories from the front lines and at home.  Among the stories shared in The War Project are a fighter pilot's view over the battlefields on D-Day, a Jewish family's dangerous escape from a Nazi death camp, a Japanese-American's look back at his own internment, and a conscientious objector's struggle to follow his heart.

Hardtke said the students were in charge of their own work throughout the show's production.  They booked the guests, operated the equipment, conducted the interviews, edited the material, and wrote their own scripts.

What most impressed Hardtke, however, was the range of material presented during the group's production meetings.  "Right from the start, they proposed stories that covered a lot of ground, yet each stayed true to their own interests as journalists,” explained Hardtke.  “While one student was interviewing a veteran from the Battle of the Bulge, another was developing a piece on baseball's role in entertaining American troops in the field.  They all grabbed the opportunity and ran with it for miles.”

Hardtke said that despite the range of topics, the stories all fit together perfectly.  “They all kept in touch with what the others were doing.  Plus, it sounds great with rich archival sound and music from the period."

After The War Project airs on November 11, the show will live on in cyberspace.  The Educational Communications Board will use the program to inspire other young people to submit content to their Wisconsin War Letters website:  www.ecb.org/warletters.  They're also encouraging students to join the youth radio project SoundWaves at www.ecb.org/soundwaves.  Plans are also in the works to make The War Project available as a podcast through the War Letters website and to distribute the program to other stations nationwide.