Boston Teens in Print

Phone: 

WriteBoston 617-541-2651

Email: 

Send submissions or staff applications to: ric.kahn.jcs@cityofboston.gov

Mission: 

Teens in Print provides a forum for teens to publish their own creative work, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and journalistic articles. T.i.P. has helped scores of Boston teens find their voice through the written word. More about T.i.P: Today, T.i.P. is published four times during the academic year. Since its launch, more than 200 teens have been published in the paper. With each successive issue, staffers have improved their journalism skills and gained confidence in their ability to communicate with their peers. Each issue also features the strong, vibrant art and photography of Artists for Humanity students. They continue to build their photojournalism skills, further strengthening T.i.P.’s commitment to quality. A total of 443 articles and poems have been published in T.i.P.'s 11 editions. 25 Boston public high schools have contributed to Teens In Print. 336 students have been published since the first issue in May 2004. 240 students outside of T.i.P. have submitted writing since May 2004. 30 Boston high school students attend T.i.P. meetings every Tuesday at the Boston Globe. 21 affiliated organizations have contributed to T.i.P. production. T.i.P. has had 96 total staff writers. 30 students registered from 8 different schools for the Summer Journalism Institute in 2007. T.i.P.'s total single copy distribution is 830,000.

Key Partners: 

Boston Globe Foundation, Boston Public Schools, Write Boston. The T.i.P. newspaper has aligned with other programs focused on developing writing skills among Boston public school students. WriteBoston Summer Journalism Institute This four-week summer program offers young people a fun way to improve writing, build journalism skills, and explore exciting places in Boston. Open to freshmen and sophomores, the Institute is sponsored by WriteBoston in collaboration with the Boston Globe Foundation and Northeastern University. Students learn basic interviewing, fact checking, and news writing skills from professional journalists, then put those skills to the test during field trips across the city. At the end of four weeks, participants turn in timely, interesting, and polished articles for placement in the fall issue of T.i.P. Media Matters Writing Conference for Teachers and Teens Media Matters was developed by the Boston Globe Foundation, in collaboration with UMass Boston and WriteBoston, to help expand on T.i.P.’s work and to showcase the Globe’s commitment to providing resources for teachers and inspiring future writers. The inaugural 2005 Conference attracted 450 budding writers and 125 of their teachers from across the Northeast. They gathered at the new UMass Campus Center for a full day of workshops, seminars, interactive icebreakers, and speakers from the worlds of business, academia, media, and the non-profit sector. The Conference was supported by a number of Boston Globe Foundation Flagship Partners, including WriteBoston, Teen Empowerment, Teen Voices, and Project: Think Different. Post-conference questionnaires confirm that Media Matters was a hit. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being “great,” the average rating of the overall conference by the student attendees was 7.1. Caroline Knapp Journalism Internship The Caroline Knapp Journalism Internship Program provides four Boston public high school students summer employment at area newspapers including the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and selected weekly papers. Administered by WriteBoston and funded by the Arnold Hiatt Foundation and the Knapp family, the program was developed to honor the late Boston journalist and author Caroline Knapp. For eight weeks, interns become valuable members of local newsrooms. One recent Knapp intern, T.i.P. staff writer Samantha Mbawuiki, had several of her articles published, including a byline op-ed piece. Interns also develop their journalism skills through mentoring with colleagues. BostonTIP.com With the success of the print version of T.i.P., the Globe Foundation and WriteBoston have turned their attention to the Web. Partnering with the Globe’s acclaimed Boston.com site, they have designed a T.i.P Web site, www.bostonTIP.com. The goals are to help recruit writers and readers for T.i.P., to elicit reader feedback, and to become a resource for teachers, students and parents.

How to get involved/application guidelines and procedures: 

Submission Policy: Any teen attending a public high school in Boston can submit essays, memoirs, poetry, photographs, lyrics, stories, sketches, cartoons, commentaries, articles, and letters. Send submissions as MS Word attachments and also in body of the e-mail message. Provide your name, age, grade, and school. You must be a BPS student. FORMAT your writing: - Double spaced, Times New Roman, 12 point font. - In the upper left corner, print your name, contributing writer, and a title or headline. Whatever you submit has to be YOUR OWN CREATION. We only print original work. Please write “this is my own creation” next to your name. You will not get your work back; keep a copy for yourself. T.i.P. reserves the right to EDIT your work for length, content, or appropriateness. Want to join the staff of Teens in Print? Please download the necessary paperwork: TiP Staff Application TiP Staff Teacher Recommendation E-MAIL submissions or staff applications to: ric.kahn.jcs@cityofboston.gov or MAIL them to: Boston Teens in Print C/O WriteBoston 7 Palmer Street Roxbury, MA 02119

Created: 
11/03/2010