As the abundance of emoticon-and-exclamation-point-riddled pages attests, online teens certainly can't be accused of apathy. As the teen Web publisher Bolt has discovered, a new generation of high school students wants to talk about the tough issues that they aren't finding in their white-washed student publications. Written by students for students, the new teen newspaper the Bolt Reporter is giving home to the stories that high school officials have banned.
"Students are having a hard time talking about - let alone publishing - topics like drugs going on in school, teachers who aren't satisfying their needs, the stress of going to college. It's not always appropriate for a public forum like a high school paper," explains the Bolt Reporter producer Parker Stanzione. "That's why you've seen an upsurge in personal Web pages and underground papers."
The Bolt Reporter, which aims to be a high school newspaper for all of America, launched two weeks ago. Twelve teenage editors and freelancers write news, features, and opinion pieces on topics that range from "Absolut Ads: Seducing Kids to Drink?" to the pros and cons of affirmative action. Currently, stories come out three times a week and about 70 percent of the content is culled from student newspapers; when the site goes daily in January, it'll feature predominantly original material.
A smattering of general-interest teen news services already exist - such as the recently launched Reuters Teen MagNet - as well as a plethora of online versions of independent school papers. But while university news services like UWire have been successful in reprinting college newspaper articles, that formula had not been applied to high school papers before the Bolt Reporter.
The most controversial and acclaimed portion of the site is the Banned on Bolt section, which reprints articles that school newspapers weren't allowed to publish. One such story was contributed by Adrian Holovaty, editor-in-chief of his Naperville, Illinois, student paper, The North Star. The story about a teacher who was dismissed for sexual harassment of a student was banned by his school board. Now Holovaty has contributed both the story and an upcoming column advising student publishers of their rights, and he attests that the feedback from the student community has been tremendous.
Mike Hiestand, an attorney with the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Virginia, which advises student papers about their legal rights, says he receives daily queries from students who've had their stories censored by school administrators. Since 1988, when the Hazelwood Supreme Court decision gave high schools almost unlimited control over newspaper content, he says, the number of censorship cases have tripled; meanwhile, he's seen a huge rise in underground student papers and Web pages.
"There's very much of a need for this kind of site," says Hiestand. "In the Hazelwood decision, the school refused to publish stories on teen pregnancy, the impact divorce had on kids - meaningful topics kids deal with everyday but schools felt weren't appropriate. Students are frustrated: they don't just want to write about the homecoming dance or the football game."
Besides reprinting the homeless and hard-hitting stories from school newspapers, the Bolt Reporter also plans on simply giving budding young writers a place to vent on the issues that matter to them. Fifteen-year-old contributor Dayna Mancini, for example, can't write for her own school newspaper because she didn't take the advanced journalism class; instead, she's started her own newsletter, The Chatterbox and now writes for the Reporter.
