Teen Appeal – Memphis Flyer

Bolton High School senior Lily Donaldson doesn’t give up easily.

After The Teen Appeal — the now-defunct, Scripps-funded citywide student newspaper — lost its funding last year, the international baccalaureate student decided to take matters into her own hands and launch a new citywide teen news website.

The Memphis Teen will give aspiring young journalists an outlet and a place to hone their craft, according to Donaldson.

Courtesy of Lily Donaldson

Lily Donaldson (third from left) at the Baldwin Fellows conference

“Right now, we’re accepting applications, so we’re reaching out to teens in the area. Once we get all the applications in and get our team together, we’ll start with the website because it’s free. But eventually, I’d like to sell ads to print a monthly newspaper,” Donaldson said.

Memphis Teen applications are available at memphisteen.rambletype.com. Those applying must be between the ages of 13 and 19 and attend a school in Shelby County, but it’s not limited to public school students. Donaldson said they’re seeking not only reporters but students with an interest in graphic design, web coding, photography, and videography.

Donaldson wrote for the monthly The Teen Appeal, a subsidiary of The Commercial Appeal that was funded by the Scripps Howard Foundation, from the second semester of her sophomore year until the first semester of her junior year. But after Gannett purchased The Commercial Appeal from Scripps, The Teen Appeal lost its funding and closed for business, leaving most local teens without a journalism outlet.

Many Shelby County Schools, including Bolton, lack school newspapers or journalism programs. Donaldson experienced first-hand the loss of her school’s newspaper. When she started high school there, Bolton had a school paper called The Bolton Paw Print, but that was later transitioned into a monthly news magazine called Scratch Magazine.

“Then our journalism teacher left, and we got a new sponsor. But that didn’t work out, so we had to choose between the yearbook and the newspaper programs,” Donaldson said. “Obviously, they chose yearbook because it’s a high school, and we have to have that.”

That’s when Donaldson went to work for The Teen Appeal, which ended up suffering a similar fate.

“I was left with no media organization to write for, and I realized that many students around Shelby County probably wouldn’t have one either since many of the schools have lost journalism funding,” Donaldson said.

This past June, when Donaldson was attending a Baldwin Fellows investigative journalism workshop at the University of South Carolina, she realized that she had to start her own self-sustaining media organization. She announced in a workshop that she’d be doing just that, and she was referred to Chris Muldrew with Rambletype — a marketing business. Muldrew offered to host The Memphis Teen website, and Donaldson said, at that point, she “had no excuse not to do this.” She filed for incorporation with the state, and now she’s accepting applications.

Donaldson said The Memphis Teen will be censorship-free, so students can feel comfortable writing about issues that happen within their schools without being silenced by the administration.

“We had some interesting things happen at my school [when we still had a news outlet], but we weren’t allowed to write about that stuff because they didn’t want to draw negative attention to the school,” Donaldson said. “I wanted this to be a way where kids can write anything they want, with limitations for appropriateness, obviously. I don’t want kids to be afraid to write about things that happen in their schools.”

Local journalist Elle Perry, Donaldson’s former editor at The Teen Appeal, said she’s excited to see a new outlet launching for Memphis teens.

“I’m glad that she’s sticking to her idea of a teen newspaper. I hope she gets a lot of people interested,” Perry said.

Donaldson said she hopes to go live with content on the website by the end of August.

Overton High School junior Breyanah Graham describes herself as “quite shy,” but she says her role as a reporter for the The Teen Appeal newspaper has given her a chance to express herself.

“Since my high school doesn’t have a school newspaper or any opportunities for interested students to participate in journalism, I never really had the chance to explore the aspects of journalism and reporting before I became a part of the The Teen Appeal,” said Graham, who is now planning to pursue a double major in journalism and biological science.

Only a handful of Shelby County Schools (SCS) have their own newspapers, and for most students, The Teen Appeal, a monthly newspaper for all high school students in Shelby County (including schools in the municipal district), is the only option for students interested in journalism. But unless it finds a new funding stream by December 31st, The Teen Appeal may be going out of business.

Elle Perry

For 18 years, the paper, which is headquartered on the University of Memphis campus, has been primarily funded by a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation. But after the former Scripps paper The Commercial Appeal was sold to Journal Media Group this year, Scripps decided to discontinue its annual $71,500 grant to The Teen Appeal.

“[Scripps] had been a very supportive partner up until they spun The Commercial Appeal into a unit — the independent Journal Media Group. And now we have word that Gannett might buy out this new company,” said David Arant, the chair of the University of Memphis journalism department. “The Scripps Foundation said we can’t support you anymore, and that’s the end of our relationship.”

That grant covers the salary and benefits for Elle Perry, the full-time newspaper coordinator. She edits the paper, assigns stories, handles day-to-day management, and holds monthly meetings for the paper staff on the University of Memphis campus. The U of M also supports the paper with a $10,000 grant that pays for a summer boot camp for the newspaper staff, which Perry is charged with planning.

“The program is unique because it allows students from different schools and backgrounds to form friendships and learn how to work with each other,” Perry said. “And it provides students the kind of skills to approach someone they don’t know and start asking questions.”

Currently, The Teen Appeal has a staff of 65 students from 19 schools. The paper publishes eight issues a year, and those are distributed in every SCS high school and a few municipal schools. The Commercial Appeal donates printing and distribution, and they’ve committed to continuing that donation so long as The Teen Appeal can find the funds to keep going, according to Otis Sanford, a U of M journalism professor and the former managing editor of The Commercial Appeal.

Sanford, who helped found The Teen Appeal in 1997, said he’s been meeting with various local foundations and national journalism organizations all year to try and nail down the funding. So far, no deals have been struck, but Sanford isn’t giving up.

“The opportunity to introduce journalism and interviewing and writing and critical thinking and professionalism to high school students who would not have that opportunity has been the most gratifying thing in my 40 years [in journalism],” Sanford said. “It would be a shame if this program went away. And I’m doing everything I can up until the last day to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Central High School junior and Teen Appeal staffer Reginae Butler wants to go into public relations, and she said the newspaper has been “an amazing opportunity” in preparing her for her future career.

“I get a chance to write about anything that’s going on in my high school. Most of us on The Teen Appeal, we don’t have a paper in our schools. So this is our one outlet for that. I want to make sure this continues,” Butler said.