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Boston Globe Foundation, WriteBoston and Artists for Humanity Partnership for Teens in Print Project
Boston Teens in Print is a citywide newspaper published by and for Boston’s 19,000 public high school students. In 2002, the Boston Globe Foundation collaborated with the non-profit WriteBoston, a city initiative founded to improve writing skills among local students, in the hopes of giving Boston teens their own publication. The idea for a citywide teen newspaper held great appeal since few Boston public high schools had their own newspapers. In addition, students who were interested in writing had nowhere to hone their skills and spend their time productively after school.
After surveying 300 Boston teens, research proved that there was a need and an audience for what would soon become Boston Teens in Print.
The Globe Foundation committed a seed grant to WriteBoston to develop and execute the newspaper and also committed to become an active partner in the project. WriteBoston school-based writing coaches recruited students from across the city through in-person presentations, posters, and newsletters. The goal was not to find only the best writers, but to find students interested in learning more about the journalism field. In 2004, 12 teens signed up; Today, Teens in Print has a staff of more than 30 teen writers.
A Boston youth arts organization, Artists for Humanity, agreed to provide artwork and photography for each edition.
To celebrate the first issue in October of 2004, Boston’s mayor and school superintendent joined Globe executives and T.i.P. staff in the Globe pressroom as the first issue came hot off the press. Papers were then distributed to 33 Boston public high schools, 25 public libraries, and a number of youth community centers.
The Globe Foundation and WriteBoston had specific goals for T.i.P. such as inspiring the next generation of Boston’s readers and writers, uniting Boston teens in a creative and collaborative endeavor, creating an outlet to inform, communicate, and promote positive change through written expression, providing participants with literacy, job skills, and career development, and to foster an appreciation of newspaper reading among young people. Staff writers commute to the Globe in Dorchester two days a week to brainstorm story ideas in a board room and produce copy in the T.i.P. computer lab.
Fifteen issues, two NAA awards, and 470 articles later, the program is a huge success. Among its countless accomplishments, T.i.P. has a single copy distribution of 40,000 and has published around 300 students since 2004. But even more than that, T.i.P. has given hope and opportunity to at-risk teens in Boston. It provides a safe-haven and intellectual environment for students after school, allows them to speak out about issues close to their hearts, provides an arena for creativity, and fosters an interest in journalism.
This partnership received the “ Innovators of the Year” award from the Boston Business Journal in September 2007.
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