Shameless magazine team launches journalism training program for teen girls

Shameless magazine, the feisty independent title,has long been known for championing the voices of teenage girls who are its principle audience. In its beginning years, it had a teen editorial collective which advised it and, now, it is launching a journalism training program for teen girls called Shameless Wire.

The magazine will recruit a diverse group of at least 10 high school-aged teens from across the Toronto area and introduce them to pitching, researching and writing articles. With the aid of donations, the magazine plans to provide participants the chance to write, report, edit, and meet other women journalists in eight workshops over four months, supplying transit tokens and lunch for each workshop, to make the program accessible to girls who might not otherwise be able to join.

The workshop idea grew out of a gender divide Allison Martel, one of the youth coordinators of Shameless, noted when working at a student paper, according to a fundraising letter signed by Martel and fellow coordinator Cate Simpson, editor Megan Griffith-Greene and publisher Stacey May Fowles:

She found that right out of high school, women fall behind their male colleagues in the newsroom. Men arrive at student papers full of confidence, ready to pitch and take assignments, while women hang back, feeling that they need more training, experience, and time before they can start publishing.

While there is no shortage of young female writers in the industry, there are systemic barriers to them entering positions of power in editorial, which means that they often cannot decide what stories are covered. This problem, it seems, is not disappearing over time. Routes into journalism are difficult - most of us can't get published or network until we've done at least one unpaid internship, and for many talented young women, that's just an impossibility. Once it’s time to hire junior reporters and editors, the applicant pool has narrowed far too much. If we want to change the face of journalism, we need to start with youth.

The publishing team at Shameless are hoping to finance the program with donations which may be made through PayPal, or by sending a cheque with "Wire" in the memo line to Shameless Magazine, P.O. Box 68548, 860A Bloor St.W., Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1X1.Further information is available by e-mail at wire@shamelessmag.com