By: LORINDA TOLEDO One of the largest nonprofit teen newspapers in the country is seeking donations to stay afloat after the Los Angeles Times announced it can no longer afford the cost of printing the paper.
L.A. Youth, which utilizes hundreds of volunteer teenage writers for its six annual issues, learned of the Times' decision in January and has since launched fundraising efforts to keep the paper going through next school year.
"Like every other nonprofit, we are facing a very difficult time these days," said Donna Myrow, L.A. Youth's founder and publisher. "We're having to evaluate whether we can continue to do the kind of work we've been doing."
Nancy Sullivan, a spokeswoman for the Times, said the newspaper supports the teen periodical but acknowledged economic struggles forced some difficult decisions.
Run by five full-time adult staffers, L.A. Youth is the product of more than 700 teens each year who volunteer to write stories ranging from film and food reviews to heartfelt personal accounts of growing up in the foster care system or being abused. L.A. Youth has a readership of 500,000 in Los Angeles County and a Web site that attracts more than 45,000 visitors each month.
Myrow, a former teacher, writer and editor, founded L.A. Youth in 1988 to provide teens with a free press after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school administrators had the right to control the content of school newspapers.
She did not appear bitter about the Times' decision to cut funding.
"The Times has been absolutely wonderful to us," Myrow said. "They are in bankruptcy and they can no longer afford to print us, but they have not abandoned us."
She said the Times plans to give L.A. Youth a $15,000 credit to help defer the cost of printing future editions, and the McCormick Foundation is in talks with the teen paper to match donations up to $15,000. However, L.A. Youth still needs another $50,000 from the public and other groups to fund the paper for the 2009-2010 school year, Myrow said.
To reduce costs, L.A. Youth will cut the number of papers it prints nearly in half, to between 60,000 and 90,000, she said.
Jolie Augustine, an eighth-grade teacher at Wilson Middle School, credits L.A. Youth with teaching her students how to think critically and get involved in their communities. While the newspaper's content is available online, she said the print product is essential in classrooms where the Internet is not always easily accessible.
Lynne Brown, career adviser at The Linden Center School?which serves emotionally disturbed children?said students at the school have written for the paper and received letters of support from their peers.
"We've had a lot of really difficult things happen," Brown said. "One of our students died who used to write for L.A. Youth. She was really involved and had at least three stories and a lot of photographs in an issue, and I feel like a little piece of her 16-year-old-life was immortalized in the paper when it otherwise wouldn't have been."
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