Traditional media, look out. Hawaii student journalists are going to give you a run for your money.

PBS Hawaii is launching the nation's first statewide student news network. Known as Hiki N? (meaning “;Can Do”; in Hawaiian), the network will be composed entirely of middle and high school students from the state's public, private and charter schools.

Hiki N? will provide students a venue for writing, editing, filming and producing news stories.

It's an incredibly gutsy and innovative endeavor. The project is spearheaded by PBS Hawaii General Manager Leslie Wilcox and her team, who have been relentless in their pursuit of this project. The endeavor is doubly impressive when you consider the times we're living in — an era of school furloughs and every conceivable cutback in the nonprofit universe.

Despite the dreary economic environment, the prospects for this project are encouraging.

So here's the deal: PBS Hawaii will provide an online news portal as well as air time on its network for student broadcasts. Already about 30 schools throughout the state have expressed an interest in creating content for broadcast and webcasts.

How do you put a network of 30 schools (and counting!) together?

The students will be connected via a Web-based virtual newsroom. This will eliminate the geographic boundaries so that teams of students from schools on different islands can work together under the Hiki N? brand, producing stories. The entire project will be supervised by longtime journalist Susan Yim, who will no doubt use her prodigious journalism and management skills to integrate the technology and the people into a seamless entity.

Hiki N? is funded nationally by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and locally by the Clarence T.C. Ching Foundation. Hawaii technology companies such as Computer Data Systems and our own company, tw telecom, are providing technical support and equipment for the fledgling network.

There's no question Hiki N? represents a great vehicle for students to develop the journalism skills and competencies they'll need for the 21st century. To give you an idea of the quality, here's a clip from Searider Productions called “;Grown for the Future”; — http://www.pbshawaii.org/ourproductions/hikino_video.htm.

When will this happen? Next year, Hiki N? will launch as a half-hour interschool newscast per week in February through April 2011. Between fall of 2011 and the following spring, the network will become a six-day-a-week broadcast and Web program. A Hiki N? newscast will air up to five days a week in prime time.

Stay tuned!

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Cliff Miyake, general manager in Honolulu for tw telecom, can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).