Inside Children's Express

This article about Children's Express was written by Martin McNamara, and was published in the Press Gazette

Whenever there's a story about a child in the newspaper, it's always in terms of a good kid or a bad kid. You never get the view of the child. So says news agency editor Stuart Fletcher.

His agency colleague, fellow editor Peter Campbell, is equally scathing about the media's treatment of young people: The majority of journalists are just hacks sitting behind their typewriters, whereas children can introduce something new into the media.

The fact that Fletcher is 14 and Campbell is 16 means they should know what they're talking about. The pair are editors with Children's Express, a news and features agency where all the stories are researched and written by children aged between eight and 18. They generate and develop story ideas, carry out all the interviews, do all their own digging and produce the finished copy.

Like any other news agency, CE sees itself as a provider of news and features to a variety of media outlets reporting on a wide range of topics. The Children's Express byline has regularly graced the pages of newspapers such as The Independent, The Gaurdian, The Times Educational Supplement and The Observer, as well as regional titles. Journalists also make regular contributions to Radios Four and Five, and Channel Four.

The idea began life in the US more than to years ago when a New York lawyer decided that children deserved to be listened to. He set up a news agency manned by children and the American CE now has articles published regularly in newspapers right across the continent.

Stephanie Williams, a journalist with 20 years' experience, began work in 1994 creating a British version of Children's Express. With the backing of several charities, a London news bureau was set up.

Williams says the agency has a twofold agenda. It's giving young people a voice, getting their views out there so they actually influence policy makers, so that people stop thinking children should be seen and not heard.

But in the process what we're doing is actually training young people. We are trying to help them develop their own potential.

At first glance the idea of a news agency providing copy originating completely from children could seem like a nice novelty; the sort of good intentioned experiment that would sit nicely on Blue Peter but not on Fleet Street. But CE is deadly serious in its belief that it is providing something the media desperately needs.

We've had editors take our stories because they think it's a cute idea, but it doesn't work and we won't work with them, says Williams.

Newspapers know there is a youth agenda out there and they know they are not satisfying it. They know there are stories on the street comers and they are not getting them That's where the power of Children's Express comes in because we do have children who know what's going on. Children interviewing other children will find a story that adults cannot reach. Journalists don't know what the questions are. You don't know what the issues are in many cases. You think you do but you don't.

Roger Blitz, editor of the Highbury and Islington Express, is one convert to the CE camp and is in discussions about having a regular monthly column from it.

We grown-ups do need shaking when it comes to thinking about children, says Blitz. We tend to push them aside when we think about issues that directly affect them. Children understand about drugs in schools much better than we do. We talk a lot about education and what's good for children without asking the children.

Diane Hofkins, primary editor at the TES, already runs a regular CE column. I wanted to get the voice of children into the pages of The Times Educational Supplement. I saw an article by Children's Express and I thought yes, that is exactly what I need.

Bringing children in off the street and getting them to produce professional copy requires a highly defined structure. The children are divided into two camps: the eight- to I3-year-olds are reporters, and the 14- to I8-year-olds are editors. Story ideas are discussed and planned at a round-table discussion. A group of five children undertakes each interview. The reporters ask the set questions, the editors follow up with any supplementary questions and the whole process is taped.

After an interview there is a debriefing session, also taped, with all the children speaking about how they thought it went. The tapes are then transcribed and the team, working with one of the adult journalists on site, produce the finished copy. CE has an attention to detail and accuracy that would bewilder some more seasoned journalists.

Rowena Young was recently appointed as bureau chief to oversee the production process. It is not the same process an adult journalist would go through, she says, but in terms of the quality of the story you get at the end of it, it is all there.

Looking at the vast array of magazines aimed at the eight-to-18-year-old age group, it would seem that the main - indeed the only - preoccupations of children are pop music, film idols and sex. Looking at the press cuttings of CE and the news stories on the board in its office reveals a more thoughtful and serious agenda.

Maybe that shouldn't be a surprise. In just the past few months, the newspapers have been full of stories on issues such as homosexuality, drugs, homelessness and smoking, all of them specifically related to young people. The valid point that CE makes is that virtually all of this coverage was written by adults for other adults. The children - who everyone is talking about - rarely get a look in.

The closest CE has come to doing a story about pop music was examining racism in the music business. Drugs, children illegally buying lottery tickets, credit-card fraud among youngsters, teenage suicides, bullying - just about every issue affecting young people has been or is being covered by the agency. Where CE has come unstuck is when it has strayed away from a youth agenda into general news. A group of young journalists from the agency went to interview Graham Kelly, head of the Football Association, at a time when he wasnt giving interviews to adult journalists

Like many CE interviewees, Kelly relaxed his guard because he was being interviewed by a bunch of kids. And they came away with an exclusive of what exactly he would do to Manchester United if it didn't control the wayward Eric Cantona.

For any other news agency, it would have been a wonderful sports story. And when CE hawked it round Fleet Street the papers wanted to use it, but take the CE byline off and rewrite it.

CE write to a publication's style, but it wants to retain some control over the story's published form, and have its byline, so it refused the offers.

The story was eventually published in The Times's youth supplement with the CE byline. It went on to receive a special chairman's commendation at the British Press Awards, but it made the team realise there are some stories that it cannot do on its own terms.

Children's Express might seem the ideal vehicle for any middle-class parent whose offspring are expressing the ambition to be the new Jeremy Paxman. But Williams says that central to the whole project is aiming it specifically at children from difficult or poor backgrounds, giving a chance to those who would not otherwise have it.

We want to hit areas of disadvantage where children don't have many opportunities, she says.

It is not difficult to see what the young journalists get from the course. Learning to work as a group, growing confidence, thinking for themselves, finding out things for themselves, finding their own voice. The agency is as much about life skills as it is about journalistic skills.

CE has already opened another bureau in Newcastle and plans to open up several other bureaux, as well as set up a national network of young stringers.

Despite its successes, Wllliams says she was disappointed by the reaction of the media in general. One of the things that saddens me is that the newspaper industry has not recognised what Children's Express has to offer. But as editors get used to us being around and realising what they miss if they don't use us, then those boundaries will go back.

At I4, Fletcher is already determined to build himself an adult career as a journalist. And he is equally determined to bring the lessons of CE into that career: If I was ever to do a story, I would have to bring the childs aspect into it.