ABSTRACT
Children's Express has urged the adult news media to provide more and better coverage of vital issues affecting children and teens and to use youth voices in stories about their issues. As Children's Express evolved, three kinds of stories emerged, along with a process. The story types included interviews, event reports and dialogues with children about their lives and experiences. At Children's Express' first national symposium on the media and children's issues in 1985, publishers, editors and journalists from every part of the country spent two days learning about stories that they were not covering. The non covered stories included youth culture, child care, health and hunger, poverty and juvenile justice. Though news media coverage of children's issues has expanded greatly since 1985, still only a handful of reporters are assigned to cover children's lives. Still missing from such coverage, for the most part, are the voices of children and teens, who are clearly experts on their own experience and feelings.
