Teen VOX Populi: Newspaper reaches out to youth

Founded in 1993 by 13 teenagers and 10 adults, the student-created and -managed newspaper, VOX, gives voice to youth from different economic backgrounds.

VOX, "voice" in Latin, is part after-school program, part news-gathering organization. Founder and Executive Director Rachel Alterman Wallack thinks the program puts out two major products.

"The tangible product is the newspaper and the Web site," Alterman Wallack said. "The other product is a more-knowledgeable, more-connected, less-isolated and better-skilled young people."

Students are involved in every aspect of VOX, from the seats they hold on the board of directors to the creation of newsroom guidelines and standards. The paper publishes monthly, but staffers also maintain a blog at the paper’s Web site, www.voxrox.org. Student staffers enter VOX via a traditional application process and many stay on staff for a few years, or the remainder of high school.

Articles and columns in the paper run the gamut of teen issues, including everything from dating and sex to trendy clothes and music. VOX staffer Kamalia Blunt thinks parents and teachers have mixed feelings about the sometimes-controversial content.

"Personally, I think many of them are opposed to what we write about, but at the same time grateful that teens get the chance to know something they don’t get in school," she said.

The teens aim to bring knowledge to what they consider the three most "invisible" youth populations: those in foster care, immigrants and refugees. The invisible youth populations are defined as kids with the least amount of access to after-school programming and community voice. Reaching these kids, Alterman Wallack said, is part of VOX’s mission to stimulate a ripple effect within all of Atlanta’s communities. Continuing that mission, every year, adult staff partners and teens take pieces of VOX curriculum out of their Downtown newsroom and into nonprofits like Angela’s House and local schools.

The young journalists are also in the midst of producing a Teen Resource Guide to Atlanta. Reporters have been pounding the pavement to compile information and review resources based on a scale of "youth friendliness."

The paper is reaching the hands of its target audience with the support of teachers in Atlanta’s schools. According to Alterman Wallack, VOX circulation is around 80,000 and is released through 313 distribution locations. The program is a nonprofit, funded by supporting organizations and individuals within the Atlanta community.

In last year’s staff survey, 98 percent of the teens reported learning a new skill as a result of their participation with the program. Staffers are responsible for seeing their story from conception to publication, but at VOX that means more work and responsibility than a 500-word document.

Teens pitch their ideas, produce their own artwork and design their page. If kids aren’t comfortable with computers and the programs required, VOX will provide basic instruction. Through working with VOX’s journalism coaches, staffers edit their drafts and sometimes reach 10 drafts before the final product is complete.

"Basically, while I’m here, it gives me a voice to open up," summer intern participant Tracy Jackson said. "At school it takes me longer at school to make friends because I don’t know them as well. Here, we have more of a way to express ourselves through writing, voice ourselves and have different conversations that we wouldn’t have at school."

 www.voxrox.org