Y-Press

Youth participation is the hallmark of Y-Press. Stories are researched, reported and written by reporters (ages 10-13) and editors (ages 14-18) for audiences of all ages. These young people produce a weekly column that appears in The Indianapolis Star on Sundays. Additional stories appear on the Y-Press website, which is updated regularly. The site promotes discussion of youth-written stories and includes youth-written book, movie, and music reviews. In addition, Y-Press invites kids and teens who are not members of the Indianapolis bureau to publish their work on the website. This invitation is worded as follows: "Do you want to speak out about an issue? Are you interested in having your voice heard, but do not have an outlet?" People under the age of 18 may submit commentaries for consideration by youth Y-Press bureau reviewers. Prospective authors are told that their work should focus on topics with which they have personal experience or discuss an issue that their peers are wrestling with. Another criterion: submissions should focus on a topic that Y-Press bureau youth would write about.

Y-Press typically focusses its efforts on local or regional stories, but also investigates and reports on national or international topics that are important to young people. Locally, the news bureau has reported on issues such as children who stutter, Catholic youths' attitudes toward priests, teens who routinely download music from the Internet, political messages in music, Latinos not feeling at home in Indiana, shoplifting (from the offenders' perspectives), ex-gang members, pregnant teens, Serbian kids, Internet research, revisiting Iraq with Kuwaiti teens, and Albinism. The news bureau has reported on such global issues as Pakistani girls' impressions of the United States, Native American youth saving their heritage, Israeli teenagers talking about conscription, teens advocating for youth rights, Seeds of Peace campers revisiting the experience, Hmong girls fighting for their fathers' citizenship, and teen author Ned Vizzini.

In some cases, young reporters have traveled as part of their research, a process that has generated opportunities for interaction with peers from very different backgrounds. For example, the summer after the Persian Gulf War, a 4-member reporting team interviewed young people in Kuwait City on the war's effect on their lives. Late in 1999, Y-Press re-interviewed two Kuwaitis who attended Indiana University about their changing attitudes 8 years later. In 1999 a five-member team traveled to Moscow to report on the changes in politics and economics in the new democracy and their ultimate effect on the country's young people. Seven Y-Press members traveled to Salvador, Brazil to cover the treatment of kids living and working on the streets and the disparity between the rich and poor. Bureau reporters have also conducted research and interviews in China, Puerto Rico, Northern Ireland, Bangladesh, and Cuba.

Children, Youth, Media Development.

Y-Press began as a Children's Express bureau in 1990 and became an independent news bureau in November 1999; in 2004 it moved to The Indianapolis Star and became an independent non-profit organisation.