About Youth Media Reporter

Youth Media Reporter (YMR) is the professional multi-media journal that serves practitioners, educators and academics in the youth media field. YMR’s purpose is to build the field by documenting, from multiple perspectives, the insights and leading lessons in engaging young people in video, film, television, radio, music, web, art, and print. YMR offers insight to the degree that young people and their adult allies use media to make a difference, address a point, enhance creative imagination, and match leadership with voice. YMR engages a variety of stakeholders to define issues, pedagogies, and challenges to the youth media field.
Incubated at Open Society Institute and managed by the Academy for Educational Development, YMR is a multi-media web journal that publishes 6-8 high quality articles every other month. In an aim to serve the field, YMR provides professional development for each contributor as they document and investigate their work, and those of their peers, through a rigorous editorial review process. YMR serves as a model to increase and share knowledge production, building a community of learners. Our articles increasingly uncover tensions within the field and spotlight youth media across the U.S. and abroad. YMR is currently funded by Open Society Institute, the McCormick Foundation, and paid subscribers.
YMR receives an average of 20,000 visits per month—a number that has been increasing by 1,500 additional visitors each month—and has over 2,000 subscribers to its monthly newsletter. The annual print journal is contracted with EBSCO, and in the near future JSTOR, databases (a resource to university libraries and public schools), broadening our audience and readership.
YMR releases on the 15th of every other month, publishing an average of 45 articles on-line divided into 6 issues per year.
Not Just a Web Journal | We do Print
Annually, the journal is bound in print form, which showcases 8-10 special feature articles unavailable online. The first volume of the print journal is available to download as a PDF online. All other volumes available via paid suscription.

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The annual print journal combines all web released issues with “special features” articles. These articles dig deep and broad within the youth media field. In 2008, 700 copies of YMR’s first annual print journal were sent at no cost—in order to introduce the publication—to approximately 60% academics and 40% youth media practitioners. We believe that YMR’s presence in academic environments will create career pipelines into the youth media field for college students interested in journalism, film, media studies, and related departments.
YMR’s Audience
Youth media professionals, leaders, and practitioners are YMR’s audience, which is expanding into new and intersecting fields nationally and around the globe. The publication offers media professionals a forum to share information, reflect on work done in the field, develop practice, ascertain new approaches and pedagogy, and celebrate youth led social change. Recognizing that many youth media practitioners come from a variety of fields, YMR includes all perspectives, viewpoints, and topics.
If you are interested in the lives and views of young people, this publication is a window into a dynamic field that reflects and reinforces the values of the media, arts, advocacy, activism, social justice, education, and youth development communities.
Through YMR, professionals in these fields can explore youth media as a way to strengthen their work, collaborate with youth and colleagues, and gain inspiration to use new strategies and perspectives.

In addition to housing the YMR publication, the website features: