The 'Other' Youth Newspapers

By: Seth Porges Old newspapers and files clutter the cramped floor-space. Situated on 18th St. Northwest in Washington's diverse Adams Morgan neighborhood, the basement newsroom is next to a bakery in a narrow retail storefront. A handful of teenagers scurry in and out of the building all day. The only clue that the location is the headquarters for a newspaper is a small sign out front that says "Young D.C."

From the outside "it looks like we're the storage for the bakery next door," says Young D.C. Director Kathy Mannix, the paper's only paid staff member, and the only one over the age of 20. "It does look like a newspaper, it just doesn't look like The New York Times or Washington Post."

Young D.C., founded in 1991 and with a current circulation of 12,000, is a free monthly written by and for Washington-area teenagers. Unlike new daily editions and inserts that target the lucrative 18-35 year-old market, such as Chicago's Red Eye and Washington's Express, papers such as Young D.C. are non-profit, serve an even younger readership, and are written by teenagers rather than professional journalists.

Young D.C.'s primary goal is not just to provide news, but also to teach young writers skills and perhaps spark their interest in journalism as a possible career.

"Young D.C. does very well for kids who were marginalized at their own school," Mannix says. "They have the talent, but they might have been immigrants or gay and those kids can be marginalized in school settings. Here they get to be leaders."

Young D.C. is part of an informal network of publications that includes papers in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. (Similar papers in Toronto, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland could not be sustained financially and have since folded.) They are typically published monthly during the school year.

The mold was forged in 1976 by the late Sister Ann Christine Heintz, a Chicago Catholic school teacher and nun, who founded Youth Communication after serving on the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation's Commission of Inquiry.

Heintz started New Expression in Chicago in 1977 after the Commission of Inquiry determined that "urban minority students felt that their journalistic freedom of expression was stifled by prejudice and bureaucracy," according to the paper's Web site.

In subsequent years, similar newspapers in other cities began to pop up with the goal of allowing teenagers the chance to express themselves through publication free of the restraint and censorship of high school papers.

"We've touched on a lot of topics that perhaps schools don't have in mind for their paper," New Expression Executive Director Phil Costello says. "While we don't try to sensationalize it, it is what's on the mind of teens. We're hoping that it lends itself to teens exploring the issues that confront them."

These topics include frank discussions about sex, drugs, abuse, prostitution, and homelessness. The October issue of New Expression featured a story by a teenager who was abused by his father. "It is something I think that strikes a chord with other teens that may not have anywhere else to talk about it and say, 'Hey, I'm not alone,'" Costello says.

Youth papers such as New Expression, which has a readership of 46,000, are distributed free at schools, libraries and "anywhere teens are likely to concentrate," according to Costello.

Because they are non-profit, youth papers are often dependent on beneficiaries. While some revenue comes from individual donors and advertising, most usually comes from private foundations and corporations.

New Expression relies on Columbia College in Chicago for office space, and the Chicago Tribune for financial assistance and printing. But the importance of this relationship goes beyond this. Costello believes the presence of newspaper professionals from the Tribune yields extraordinary benefits for the teenagers. "They also provide just an immense amount of expertise," Costello says. "What also separates us [from high school newspapers] is they can see ... what goes into a professional newspaper."

Keith Hefner, executive director of Youth Communication/New York, Inc. (no formal affiliation to Chicago's Youth Communication), publishes New York's New Youth Connections and Represent. "One of the most important functions of all these publications is it gives the readers an accurate reflection of their lives and experiences," says Hefner. "They don't see it in mainstream newspapers. I'm an average white guy, and so I see my experiences reflected in the media accurately most of the time. If you're a poor teenager, an immigrant kid living in a major city, you're gonna be ignored. You're gonna be caricatured. ... We try to produce publications where that kid picks it up and it produces the shock of recognition: 'My concerns are being taken seriously.' That's what's really important about these publications. They bring those kids who are marginalized more into the civic culture of America."

While New Youth Connections, circulation 65,000, is along the lines of the original Youth Communication mold, Represent, 15,000 circ, is for children in the foster care system.

Hefner feels the newspapers are just as important for the writers as the readers. "It is essentially a very intensive writing program," he says. But the young people also learn other skills, such as how to use Google and LexisNexis.

Youth papers originated in part as a way for publishers to draw a diverse group of teenagers into future journalism careers despite budget cuts in high school journalism programs, according to Mannix.

"The writers tell us that when they come into the program the world seems like a small place to them," Hefner says. "It's no bigger than their block or high school, and their opportunities seem similarly narrow. When they leave, the world seems like a big place to them, where opportunities are much wider. It has that opening effect on them. It's built on the foundation of having stronger skills."