TikTok? Facebook? Instagram? Whatsapp? iPhone? Terms like these were still unknown at the time Southgerman newspaper 18 years ago, together with the Ministry of Culture, organized the leaf making competition for the first time. The largest social network at the time was called “studiVZ”, and anyone who wanted to use it first had to boot up their home computer and log on to the Internet.
Now I sometimes feel like an old geezer when I hold up a printed newspaper in front of school classes. What is a message? What is journalism? And what is advertising? Many teenagers don’t know what to do with questions like these. They rely entirely on platforms like TikTok when they want to find out about how things are going through video snippets. It’s a bit like asking a pickpocket to hold your wallet for a moment. It doesn’t matter what media content you consume every day.
The best way for students to develop a sense of the importance of facts and research is to work in the editorial department of their own newspaper. It doesn’t matter whether it is printed at the end or is on the homepage. In this respect, the leaf making competition is pretty old school, but that is perhaps why it is more important than ever before.