Scholarships to be Awarded to Five Schools Throughout the African Diaspora to Integrate the Proprietary Software Technology
NYC, NY — Pressto is partnering with Karen Hunter, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, celebrated radio talk-show host, and co-author of numerous New York Times bestsellers to bring the proprietary software technology to kids around the world. As part of their collaboration, Hunter is leading a scholarship program to gift Pressto software to five schools across the African Diaspora. To date, a school in Jamaica and Ghana have been selected, with three more schools to be chosen in the upcoming months.
“Journalism is one of the most important tenets of a healthy democracy. What is truth? How do we trust our news? Those questions hang in the balance. What Pressto is doing in training the next generation to become the voice, eyes and ears of the people is invaluable,” said Karen Hunter, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder of Knarrative and TheHub.News. “The scholarship program that we’re thrilled to be embarking on with Pressto not only brings this important technology to students, but also it enhances and extends the work that Knarrative and TheHub.News are doing to connect diasporic communities throughout the world.”
Pressto is the first writing and micro-journalism platform for K-12 students. The software teaches children to communicate more clearly, process and interpret information they see in the media, and create their own content in the form of newspapers and zines.
The platform’s proprietary technology is designed to transform the way youth create and understand media by helping students to decipher between fact and opinion, and develop a healthy relationship with what they create and consume, and ultimately put out into the world. Pressto's primary focus is to engage with schools in order to implement the program as a supplemental tool that fits any curriculum, across subject areas.
“It’s an honor to work with such a prolific and esteemed journalist as Karen, and we could not be more excited to have her support as we continue to encourage student journalism and bring Pressto to kids in areas of the world that we have not been able to reach,” said Pressto Founder Daniel Stedman. “When we established Pressto, a core part of our mission was to ensure accessibility to all that the platform has to offer, and working with Karen on the scholarships truly brings this aspect of our brand to the next level.”
To learn more about how a student, school or classroom can integrate Pressto into their own curriculum, visit www.joinpressto.com.
ABOUT KAREN HUNTER
Karen Hunter is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, professor, publisher and “change agent,” according to Essence magazine, which named her one of the “Woke100” of 2018. She was also selected to the 2020 Ebony magazine’s Power 100 List. As a writer, Karen has co authored eight New York Times bestsellers. As CEO of Karen Hunter Publishing, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, she published more than 35 books, including No. 1 NYT bestseller True You by pop icon Janet Jackson, as well as bestsellers with Kris Jenner and E. Lynn Harris. Karen has been named one of the 100 Most Important Radio Talk Show Hosts in America by industry bible Talkers Magazine every year since 2015. A New Jersey native, a Drew University graduate, Karen has been a full-time professor and Distinguished Lecturer in the Film & Media Department at Hunter College in New York City since 2004. In 2020, during the pandemic, Karen launched Knarrative, which is home to the largest Africana Studies classroom in the world.
ABOUT PRESSTO
Pressto was founded in 2021 by Daniel Stedman, the co-founder of Brooklyn Magazine and Northside Media. Stedman sought to volunteer at high schools throughout Brooklyn and found that many student newspaper programs had been abandoned, which was part of his inspiration for creating Pressto. The SaaS platform's proprietary tools teach straightforward educational skills, along with critical thinking and media literacy, helping kids to differentiate between fact and opinion, leaving young people less susceptible to the manipulations of social media and propaganda. Pressto’s four key modules are the newspaper builder, which gets students doing, the educational skills, which gets students learning, the cognitive behavior therapy, which gets students understanding and the Pressto Academy, which will help to secure paid writing assignments to get students working. To learn more, visit www.joinpressto.com.
