http://www.youthoutlook.org/

YO! Youth Outlook, an online youth journal, grew out of a print magazine by the same name, but offers far more than most sites designed to supplement a magazine. And while the print version is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, its online incarnation gives a national platform to young writers expressing their opinions on both local and national issues.

The stories in YO! are arranged in categories from personal concerns such as "Lifestyle" and "Entertainment," to the clearly civic "World and Politics." There, in an article dated February 2004, a young man recounts in stinging terms the state's plans to eliminate the very programs that helped him, and thousands of other troubled or underprivileged youth, get into, and through, college. (To judge from the young man's writing, money spent for those programs was well-spent.) The "Neighborhoods" section and "School and Streets" remind us that the after-school lives of young people are also impacted by civic themes. Articles on friends lost to gun violence, the junk-food-heavy offerings of food pantries for the hungry, and how a shooting changed a young man's sex life, reflect young people wrestling day-to-day with social problems. So too in "Lifestyle," where a young black man swears off marijuana as he plans how he'll raise his newborn daughter.

While many of the website stories are anecdotal and contain little background about underlying issues, they nevertheless provide insight about the effects of public policy on the lives of young people.

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