Welcome to SUNN -
the Students United News Network!
SUNN is a coalition of leading high school and undergraduate student newspapers. We aggregate, curate, reward and mentor the best student journalism nationwide, amplifying young voices and building up newsroom and media leaders of tomorrow.
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SUNN is a “super newspaper” for student journalism. We gather all our content from the student newsrooms in the network and syndicate articles monthly through our online magazine “Watch Us Rise.” Ultimately, SUNN aims to be the pipeline that connects young journalists to the industry and to each other, across different schools, age groups and locations. We hope to reach 100 founding member papers with your help!
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SUNN aims to be the pipeline that connects high school and undergraduate journalists to each other and to the news industry at large.
As an educator who believes in the power of student journalism, and as a reporter who has seen local newsrooms hollowing over the years, our founder Amanda Little dreamed up SUNN to connect young content creators who are working tirelessly to fill the gaps that have been left by the erosion of local news outlets.
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Joining and being part of SUNN is simple:
SIGN UP- As an advisor of a student newspaper, you sign up using our short registration form and we will get in touch with you to confirm.
PITCH- Students submit up to 3 already-published articles or multimedia works per month for us to consider syndicating.
CASH OUT- We pay the writers of each piece we decide to publish.
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Our goal is to elevate great student journalism, incentivize this work, and offer powerful learning and career opportunities. Here’s a snapshot of the benefits:
When an article is chosen as a SUNN Selection, it gets national distribution on our platform; your newspaper of origin will be credited with a link to the original piece.
Published students will receive an honorarium of $50 per piece for syndication or $75 per piece for a new commission inspired by their work.
Pieces that aren’t syndicated may be spotlighted and celebrated on our social media accounts (@kidizenship on X, Instagram and TikTok)
Students will have free access to twice-yearly Zoom events that convene the students and faculty in our network and introduce them to leading journalists nationwide, starting with our launch event late this spring.
A cache of free resources, including connections to local and national organizations nationwide that support student journalists, writing and reporting tips and lessons for student journalists, and a community chat space where student editors and writers and faculty advisors can share questions and best practices.
Leadership opportunities for young reporters who’d like to apply to join our regional student boards.
Our Story
SUNN was created by Amanda Little, the founder of both Kidizenship, a nonprofit civics media platform, and Watch Us Rise, Kidizenship’s bi-monthly online civics magazine that has already begun syndicating existing articles from high school and college newspapers, as well as inviting high school and college journalists to write new articles. SUNN aims to be an extension of Watch Us Rise that continues our mission of amplifying young voices in journalism.
The Schools
Over the past few months, we’ve scoured the web to find the strongest student journalism in the nation. This is how we landed on our list of the 100 schools we’re inviting to be the founding members of SUNN. We can’t wait to keep growing it from there.
Questions? Email amanda@kidizenship.com for more information.