 Okay, we're back for live. It's a given Tuesday, feels like Monday, but it's Tuesday. And his community matters because community does matter. And we have Robert Pennyback, or PBS. And he's going to talk about HIKI NŌ. Good morning, Robert. Good morning, Jay. HIKI NŌ is your program for kids, by kids, with kids, for kids. And it's really extraordinary going on a long time now, years, decades even, and you've been running it and growing it all this time and what fun you have and I envy you that. Can you talk about what HIKI NŌ is and how it works? Well, HIKI NŌ means can do in Hawaiian. And it's our PBS Hawaii statewide student news network. We're going to hit 10 years next year on the air. And basically it's schools across the state, public and private and charter schools, students create news features. And we mentor them and their teachers to get the quality of their work up to PBS standards because they need to be that of that standard to air on our air. And then we curate the separate stories into half hour episodes that air every Thursday night and and PBS Hawaii and then we put them online on PBS Hawaii.org. And it's, we have 90 schools. They're not all producing at the same time. At a given season we may have about 60 schools in production. So it's a lot to deal with, a lot of juggling, but in the end it's really rewarding because the students work. Once we get up to that quality level is just incredible. There's nothing like it, getting their insights on the world. So you mentioned the PBS standards and I'm always interested in that because PBS is, it is the standard. It is the standard by which all things, all public television is measured, all community television is measured. What are those standards? What do they like? What categories and specifications? They get real specific. If you go down to the PBS website, you can search for them. Used to be called the red book. And it's just pages and pages of, you know, production quality standards, technical specs that are really specific, journalistic standards, fairness standards that it really covers pretty much any, any situation that may arise where you question is, does this meet the standard of fairness. And, but after a while, it kind of becomes second nature. It sort of becomes a gut thing where you were, me as the executive producer, I just feel okay. Does that, does that make it or not? And why does it not? And let's try to, let's try to change things so that it does. We don't really want to change what is happening, what the students are trying to express. Just, just the form that it takes and the fairness issues so that it can air on public television. Yeah, and well, I mean, the public television is really notable for those standards. I mean, I watch the news hour every day. It's almost a religion with me. And I feel they're fair and I feel their stuff is the best it can be, even now in the time of COVID, where they, they look a lot like us right now, you and me. Yeah. Yeah. It's all, it's all the same now. Yeah, it can come down even something as simple as what the student may not think of, let's say they're doing a story on a, on a business and we love stories like that a mom and pop business and then at the end they say and they make the best shave ice in the world. Well, you can't say that on PBS. Let's just say that they make shave ice and the people enjoy it. And that's one of the things that, you know, that we just have to check off and make sure that they're, that they're hitting all the right standards. So how much do the kids do and how much do you do. I mean, you mentioned curation, I don't know exactly what that is in this context. Who selects the topics, who shapes the, you know, the way it's treated, and who maintains the standards. The topics are chosen by the students. And we've, we started that way and we found that it was a really good way to go because then whatever, whatever ends up as the final product really is reflecting what, what is of interest to the students. So they pick the topics, but we have a process early on, called a pitch sheet, where they, they and their teachers they always work with teachers have to answer certain questions from us. And those questions just vet. How, how much they've thought about this beforehand. Are they prepared to, to tackle the subject. And ask the right questions. Are they going to call the right people and do the research. So it just helps them to to get, get the project up and running. But the initial idea is theirs. And we've never rejected a project just solely on the topic that they choose. Sometimes we go boy this this is going to be a doozy and let's see what they come up with but we've never said now you can't do that because they they've come on said that they want to do this. So, so that's the first vetting process. Then it's, it's pretty intensive where the teacher is always running the show, because he can always really teacher teacher centric. They're working with their students. We assign each project after it's green lit a mentor. And so we have a team of about right now about 10 industry professionals who are either working journalists producers. directors, and they work with the students progress through the teacher. The edited pieces are uploaded to a website that the mentor checks, and the mentor will give specific comments. And based on those comments, the teacher will ask the student to do another version. And that goes back and forth. The team that the mentor, the teacher and the students feel okay, I think, I think we've got it. I think this, this is ready for PBS Hawaii. Then they submit it and then I'm the one that that's you know that that final standard check and give it. It's approved to air, then it gets uploaded to air. And then the curation project, a process as I mentioned is really what should what stories are ready to air. And how do we fit them into an upcoming episode. And, and then my editor doesn't edit the content doesn't edit the stories, he just places them in the show, along with transitions and the credits. And that's how the show is done so really the content is really the whole process through coming from the students. And you got it down to a science now it's all systematized. How much time do they get for a given segment, and how many are usually involved in the creation of this how many students are involved. Well, it very we are a regular cycle we like to give them about two months, which sounds like a long time but really we have to understand it's this is a learning process. This is part of a class. So it's not like a professional situation where you say okay, you got to get it done tomorrow. So we give them that time so they can do the back and forth with the mentor. So that's that's about the standard we we we schedule in for about two months. There are other types of projects we have just to change things up. We have a challenge. We just finished one where they're only given four days. And that's just a different, different type of discipline that gets kicked into place there, where they're, they're under the gun, but the good thing about that is they, it's usually over a long weekend and they focus only on that. But but the usual processes about two months. And how long is the segment. The story about about a story is about three minutes. Yeah, but it's not you know, it really is the length should be how, how long the story needs to be told, you know, so you're flexible about that. Yeah, yeah, if it needs, if it needs another 20 seconds and really it's all pertinent, then we'll let it go. If it, the story gets told in two and a half minutes, we'll let it go so it kind of balances itself out and we end up with about eight, eight stories within a show. It's like the moving company of days gone by. Yeah, yeah, sort of that format. Yeah. Now it's all it's all local style though right I mean the topics are Hawaii based. And you ever covered national stories. Not per se I mean they would cover topics that would be of national interest, but they're doing it from a local perspective. Sometimes they're really timely or they're really ahead of their time. One example that comes to mind is this was quite a few years back. A middle school wine I intermediate school wanted to do a story on on a transgender student of theirs eighth grader. And that was, you know, of course, transgenders have been around forever but in terms of, you know, them being really recognized and accepted into schools, something quite new and this was right around the time of the controversy of the bathrooms in schools going on on the mainland in North Carolina. So, so their story was was sort of ahead of its time and the nice thing about HIKI NŌ is it really humanizes broad national story topics. And so, rather than just thinking of this, this issue of what do you do about transgender students within the school, you we got to meet an actual transgender student and, you know, see that she's a real human being just like all of us and trying to make it in school which is, you know, tough, tough already as it is. So, so I guess what I'm saying is they can touch on things that are national interest but they're coming from a local perspective, which really makes it unique. You know, students who work in the media, high school kids or what range do you cover high school and also junior high school and. Yeah, school and believe it or not, and they've really come through we've, we've had about four elementary schools so that's that really shocked me but they, some of them can can do the work you know it's just terrific. It is. It has an effect on kids though you know it has a big time on people in general I would say, you know once you're in the media it's the it's the bug that bit you. Then all of a sudden your level of awareness about the things going on around you, your level of awareness about social trends and news and events and you know anything of interest in the public becomes a special interest to you. And it does change your life doesn't it must change their lives. It does in in ways that you might not think though. You know a lot of them look like they, they could certainly get into the field that they have the chops. And surprisingly a lot of them, when they go into college, go into another field, but the experience they've had with HIKI NŌ has really informed them to take on anything, because when you think about it. There are very few situations like doing a new story with with pictures and sound out in the real world with a team that that forces you to make on the spot decisions that are going to have consequences and to get along with people. And to interpret reality and what people are saying, all those skills you're really going to need in any field. So they, they, they really get their legs of their professional legs through the HIKI NŌ process to take them into into any field. And they climbing all over to get into these classes and there's a lot of competition to be involved. You know, I think it's, it's a balance because you would think that that, yeah, they'd be, they'd be really, you know, jumping at the opportunity but what they soon realize is it's a lot of work. So this is not what what I used to call that we used to call the Mickey Mouse class, you know, film 101 was in Mickey Mouse class you just watched movies. This, this is a lot of hard work that's going to take up a lot of your extracurricular time. And, and the thing of it is, you know, the time you spent on a project as it is in the real world is really limitless you really have to put in whatever time it takes to make it right. So, so I think it balances out so there's a there's a pretty a pretty high attrition rate of students who try and then go this isn't for me this is too hard. Interesting. Okay, we have some questions if you don't mind and let me pose questions to you that have come in in the interim from viewers. How much time do mentors spend and are they volunteers. They're not volunteers early on. When, when our kicking those grant funded and early on when the grant funds were available. I made the decision that I wanted professionals involved in this project to really give it that world real world aspect. I'm just going to listen to them say you know I would do this for free and I believe them, but the reality is, I needed to get HIKI no pretty high in their priority list, because the key is that these mentors have to have to respond quickly otherwise the whole process gets jammed up. So if you're doing something on a voluntary basis, even though your heart is there. But, you know, you have a paying gig. You're going to have to deal with the paying gig first. And we don't pay them a lot but we pay them enough so that you can know some, you know somewhere at least we hope the top range of their priorities. That's that that's the answer to that question and I like it because it then it turns it into a professional into the professional realm. This is a professional process they're getting paid for it. They're responsible for the project. The time they spend really again depends on the need. Before we didn't we didn't limit it and there were times when a mentor would look at. I think the record was about 25 rough cuts. You know before they got it and so so you can imagine that really adds up. Yeah, yeah. We've recently tried to try to limit to to six just so that the school the students and the teacher would would. They really use their their the time they got from the mentors judiciously and say okay, we've got we've got two more cuts with them we better we better step it up. Yeah, use the resources carefully. Yeah, yeah. So, so the average would be, you know, six revisions and a mentor could take a couple hours on each one and then you know just so it's I had never really counted it but a project could take at least 24 hours cumulative. Yeah. Okay, that's a that's very attractive actually to be a mentor. Do you have they have applicants banging at your door. Well, they try but you know it really takes a special person we've tried professionals that are really really excel in their field and they're just not great mentors you know it. It's an interesting mix of of expertise and and humbleness. You can't you can't have too much of an ego because you don't want to overwhelm the student with, you know, you have to remember that's the students story it's not yours. And you really have to take your ego out and say, Okay, how can I best help the student. I would do it this way but but it's not the way that they would do it so how can I best help them so um, so we're still looking but we've we've seemed to arrived at a comfortable number of 10 that seemed to seem to handle all the projects. Sounds just right. Why choice to pay them I think. Okay, but we're heading on to the area that we were going to cover pursuant to the title of the show about you know how how he can know has dealt with coven and leading into that we have a viewer question that's kind of on that topic. Do you produce during the summer. What is your, you know, annual schedule because you're, you know, connected to the schools and if the schools are in session he's still producing. Well, summer is training time. So they, they go into training workshops. This this year they're going to be online no surprise. So summer is really the training time. Then we gear up for the annual teachers workshop in mid August. And, and that's when my staff puts together a whole whole days worth of training for the teachers. That's been at the TV station but this year it's likely going to be online as well or, you know, like this. So, but we then we do a summer, summer series we've done for the past few years, called the class of whatever the year is, we've done the class of 2018 the class of 2019. And this, this year will be very different. And that's where we, we have, we, we get a try to get a dozen graph seniors, you know, graduates who really excel and you can know to sit around and talk about their experience. And then what they what they expect in their lives coming up. And so that's a big summer project. And, and we'll be doing that again and as you can guess it'll be very different this year. It's a good time for us. Yeah, well this is just a good year to take stock of everything isn't it that's, you know, pursuant to discussion before the show everybody's reconsidering everything and learning from it. And you mentioned that, you know, the cycle is couple months and query you must have had shows in the pipeline, or at least segments in the pipeline. I mean, COVID stopped everything. And I wonder, what are you doing with that. How does that work now because your pipeline got stopped. Yeah. Well, what, what happened was, you know, as everyone, if you can think back in mid March, everything happened really quickly. I mean, we were all watching. And then not declared a pandemic really increase and guessing that something would have to happen and we would follow suit with other countries. Right at the time that that everything, you know, changed when it was announced as a pandemic. What was going on with HIKI NŌ was 13 HIKI NŌ schools were in Washington DC for a national competition. It happens every, every March it's called STN student television network. And so big deal to them. It's like the Super Bowl of student media competitions. And we were going to follow them because the HIKI NŌ schools do really well because because of the experience they get all year round. And we were going to do stories for the news outlets just to show how away kids are doing. Cameraman went a day before me. And then the day that I was supposed to fly out was the day that that it was called a pandemic. It was announced that it was a pandemic. And they, and they canceled this event because the event usually draws about 3,000 students. And so I was about two hours away from my flight and I, and luckily they texted me, I canceled. But my cameraman and all those Hawaii schools, all the schools were, were stranded there. They had already flown over. So this was our first, first experience with dealing with the students dealing with COVID-19. It was a great opportunity, Robert. It turned into an opportunity. So what happened, what I told my cameraman, well, you know, you're, you probably can't get a flight back. So you might as well stay and just, you know, shoot whatever is happening. And what happened was the students, the school groups, you know, tried to get back and found that they really couldn't, you know, they couldn't get the flight right back, or if they didn't, it would cost thousands of dollars. And so they stayed and a lot of them said, you know, there's no competition, but we're storytellers, we're going to tell stories. And they went out and did stories. And my cameraman followed them, interviewed them on their progress with their stories, but also just on their thoughts about what's happening in the world right now. So I turned that into a documentary for PBS Hawaii that aired a couple months after, well, about a month after that event was really a quick turnaround. That was not a HIKI NŌ show. That was a full tilt documentary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We aired in the HIKI NŌ slot because that would be the audience, but it was, you know, we produced it. But the topic were HIKI NŌ teachers and students stranded in DC figuring out what to do. And a lot of them started to have really, really prescient insights into the situation. And it showed their resilience, you know, that they said, well, they were really disappointed that the competition was canceled, but they said, you know, let's make the best of it, and they did. Then things really amped up because we knew, well, right at that time, then the governor and the mayors put in the, you know, the shelter at home mandates. And so the kids got back and they actually self-quarantined anyway for 14 days as everyone should returning from a trip. So we had, we had those kids and really the whole HIKI NŌ core stuck at home. And we had shows coming up. We had, we do rounds of six new shows. And then we rerun those. We have that pattern and the round of new shows was coming up. We had some stories, as you had mentioned, in the works, but really a lot of the work was yet to be done. So we said, well, students are at home. They're experiencing something. Why don't we find out what they're experiencing? Why don't we have them do reflections? And, okay, well, how are we going to get them the equipment? That's another hurdle. Well, they all have, pretty much all of them have smartphones and the smartphone cameras are quite good now. So we created a new product that was, that was to be this really the starring feature of the upcoming shows called HIKI NŌ student reflections in the time of COVID-19. And we sprung into action. We said, we told the teachers, this is what we want to do, find out which students are interested, assign them. So we did the mentoring process different. We didn't want to shape their content. This was going to be their thoughts, you know, un, you know, unantited, really, you know, unfiltered. Of course, they had to be, they had to be the decency standards. So the mentor turned into more of a coach during the shooting of these. So talk to the camera. I don't want this to feel like a scripted piece that you're memorizing. You know, it can be scripted, but we just want you to talk, talk very candidly to the camera as though the camera is your friend. Or, or is the audience. And, and they did these and they were also able to fill in parts of the story they told with B-roll with bits of video and stills. We first told them, let's make these 30 seconds because 30 seconds is the right length for a thought. And then we soon found out now it's, they couldn't stick to 30 seconds. They had a lot to say. So it went up to a minute. But they, they were really successful and they became the bridges between the traditional HIKI NŌ stories that were in the works, that the thread through the shows and, and frankly, they were the best parts of the show. It's still going on. The last show with new student reflections airs this Thursday night. It's a great cross-section of high school students, middle school students, one elementary school student, kids from all different islands, different walks of life, and they're, and their reflections, their responses were different as well. So there are no, there are no limits in the sense that you, it could be any student who has reflections. It isn't necessarily the ones in the classes that are, you know, doing HIKI NŌ, it could be anybody they approach, right? That's, that's true, but they tended to be those that were in HIKI NŌ already. We called them correspondents. So they really didn't want to come from a journalistic approach. And so I'm quite sure that all the students had already had some HIKI NŌ experience or were enrolled in the, in the class. They had, you know, they had to be good communicators and good writers. But what was different for us, and it really was a breakthrough. We'd never done this before, and it really showed me that, you know, we should have tried this a long time ago. Well, maybe you'll try it in the future. Yeah, well, I think we're going to continue it, yeah, because of the results, but it was the first time where that veil of the whole mechanism of HIKI NŌ, of the mentors and the teacher and the expectations, that screen that all of HIKI NŌ was filtered through, which was, what's a good screen was lifted. And this was just the student, the student heart to heart talking about what's going on in their, in their, their home right now, what's going on with themselves, with their family. You know, a lot of them were quite poignant and touching and a little sad, but a lot of them were really hopeful, really optimistic. The common thing that came out was, you know, I'm really getting to spend time with my family now or a family spent getting time to spend with one another that we hadn't before. But there was also talk of sacrifice. Parents that have to work because they're they're essential labors, but the child is at home. Home alone, probably with some, some other supervision, but away from their, their, their actual parents. So those are pieces of reality that were that were really expressed throughout these, yeah. Well, you know, necessity is the mother of invention and that sounds like a great thing to do going forward to take temperature that way, to have that candid unfiltered, or at least mostly unfiltered statement of state of mind by these kids. It's a way to stay in touch with that, the whole generation, the next, the next world, you know, our next chapter. Something strikes me though, and I go back to, you know, the twin, the twin towers, 911. You know, when, right after it happened, everybody was in a state of shock. It was an inflection point called an inflection point, and everybody is very philosophical and trying to get, get a handle on things. When that happens and COVID is likewise an inflection point where everybody is trying to find himself get balanced after or in the course of a traumatic experience. And that's a great time to get people to give their reflections. And when things settle down, and we get back to hate to use this word we get back to something that feels like normal. They may not be in the same inflection point anymore. They may not be, you know, in the same state of mind to provide you with those cell phone reflections those candid statements. What do you think is there a way to keep that going in the future. I think so because, you know, it's things will go back to to a certain level of normalcy but but the world has changed just as it has after it had after 911 just as it had over after Pearl Harbor. And I think I think these students, particularly the high schools are are really the ones to take the temperature as we as we continue on as life continues on because they're dealing with things that will be changed, such as college, you know, such as, you know, their their thoughts on what would be their future profession. You know, it really is a is a generational thing. And one of the student reflections that really brought this home was the student from Roosevelt High School was I would happen to be their mentor and we're just talking through what he was going to discuss and he said you know the other day my mom said something me that really hit me. She said, do you realize you were born a couple weeks before 911, and you are graduating during coven 19. So that's the first time I hit that and so that generation is is bookended by the two greatest crises in the 20th century. So they are a generation of I don't know what you're going to call them, you know, maybe the greatest generation but they are really the ones that as as children inherited one, one type of world that was turned upside down. And now as adults are inheriting a world turned upside down in another way. So, you know, maybe they're maybe they're the best sooner generation to deal with having having grown up in a post 911 world. But I think to your point is, it's just going to evolve and I think the important thing is to keep keep thinking about that, you know, not not getting to to be able to to be able to step back every once in a while from our daily lives and really look at how, you know, in the big picture, things are changing. Yeah. Because that's the changes for them it changes for us and, and we need to talk to them we need to hear from them and you, and you help us facilitate that you make that that connection and we greatly appreciate your service as you know think tech feels very highly about you. We gave you a community service award back in December, and it's still good. It's still good. You can take it to the bank. Okay. That's Robert Benny back or a PBS HIKI NŌ. Thank you so much for joining us today, Robert. Oh, thank you. My pleasure.