To the Editor:

We have a problem. Whether you know it or not, the youth of the North Country are suffering, partially due to your news stories. Not only are your stories skewing the publics understanding of the youth culture, but teens are also having a hard time understanding their own identity due to their near invisibility in the news.

Now allow me to elaborate on this ‘invisibility.’ While you may claim you do in fact cover stories about youth and what they are doing in the community, these stories tend to fall under two categories: crime reports and stories being covered and hidden by others. Every day I go on your website and without fail I can easily find police blotters about teen crime and stories about teen delinquency. If you don’t believe me just search the word ‘teen’ on your site, and see what pops up. Beyond those crime stories, I have to do a significant amount of digging before finally finding any kind of positive report about the local youth. Are the stories of crime more important? Or do they just give you more readers?

Nevertheless, these actions and stories have negative ramifications that you may or may not know about. The repetition and sheer volume of these stories strongly influence the youths’ sense of self. If all they see is negative stories about crime, teens begin to only see themselves within those limits. Beyond their own identity these stories and the lacking of positive ones leads to the stereotyping of the population as a whole. When I asked locals and students how they would describe the North Country youth, words such as criminals, drug abusers and delinquents were all frequently used. This is a problem.

Teens are doing fantastic and inspiring things everyday. Maybe focusing on those positive stories rather than the negative would provide benefits to not only the public’s understanding of local teens, but the teens themselves.

Emma Gailey

Canton