Editors Want to 'Keep It Real' for Teens
By LaShawnda Price, Teenwork 2000 fellow and writer for Listen Up! at the Jacksonville (N.C.) Daily News.
reprinted from the Winter' 01 newsletter
Nine youth editors sat on the floor of a hallway in the Sheraton Capital Center Hotel in Raleigh, N.C., slacks and skirts wrinkled beneath them, mirroring the sitting style from their own childhood days. The setting couldn't have been more appropriate for the "Coaching Young Writers" session of TEENWork 2000. The editors discussed the struggle of editing for kids and teens while still keeping the youth writers' tone. They also explored how to be careful not to let the editing process discourage kids.
For those in the group, it was important to learn how to work well with writers who represent teenagers and youth in the newspaper.
"Kids don't have the same rules as a regular paper," said session leader Eric Elkins, editor of Colorado Kids, the weekly children's section in the Denver Post. "Kids speak to other kids in a way that we cant." For him, it is vital to keep a kid's voice while changing mechanics and grammar. The primary question that he and the other editors in the session dealt with was, "How can I make the text work so that kids are going to want to look at it?"
"My job is to make this interesting to kids so they want to read it and love the newspaper," Elkins said. "If I have to use words like 'fart,' 'puke' and 'snot,' then I do it. If it makes the kids smile and grabs them, then we should do it."
No matter in what shape the article arrives, most of the youth editors said they opt not to rewrite the article. Rather, they sit down with the writer and explain, "This is what I'm changing and why - thus making it a partnership. "I have to make the decision of whether to take this out or leave it in because they're speaking to their peers," said Jeffery Womble, editor of Flipside in the Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer.
"More and more children's editors are getting involved with YEAA," Elkins said. "It's more important because it's a thing which many editors struggle with, which is how to edit for kids. They may struggle with keeping the child's voice in the writing but keeping journalistic qualities, or providing feedback that's worthwhile but doesn't alienate kids."
Theresa Walsh Giarrusso, an editor at the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, said she realized that the key to a successful youth paper is getting kids to love journalism as much as the editor does. "You want to have it interesting so that they want to read it and pick it up," she said, "and the way to do that is to get them involved. Eric has managed to make his staff of kids work because kids love to read, and they love to read other things that kids write."
