March 27, 2009
CONTACT: Eming Piansay
Associate Editor, YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia
415.503.4170

Calling all Youth/Youth Media Bloggers
Participate in the Sixth Youth Media Blog-a-Thon
Topic: Modern Love

Building on the success of 2008’s virtual events, YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia and WireTap are proud to announce our sixth weeklong Youth Media Blog-a-Thon to kick off on March 31st .

We are calling all young bloggers (between the ages of 14-26) – along with any bloggers dedicated to writing about youth issues and youth media – to blog from March 31st to April 7th about: Modern Love.

What’s love got to do with it? Everything! From the royal rumble on Prop 8, to domestic violence and the everyday struggle of keeping your own relationship together – love and relationships have become always-evolving cornerstone of our daily life, forcing the idea of love and relationship to change with the times.

Here are some ideas to address in your blog posts:

•Prop. 8 is still in the headlines, and is likely to be in the headlines for the next few years. How do you feel about the issue? And how important is marriage to you?
•Does your family talk about sex? If so, how? If not, what does that silence mean to you?
•How are queer issues discussed among your friends? Family? How have those discussions shaped your opinions?
•A recent article published in the Washington Post found that mixed race marriages are on the decline among immigrant children. Explain how you feel about interracial dating and family expectations.
•Two weeks after Chris Brown allegedly brutally assaulted pop star Rihanna, graphic photos appeared on the web detailing the singer’s injuries. The photos raised important issues about privacy. What role do you think celebrities have in opening dialogue on important issues like violence? And what issues do you think should remain a celebrity’s personal pain?
•Who has shaped your idea of a working relationship? Family? Friends? Have they been positive? Negative? Explain.
• Knowing that 50% of marriages end in divorce, does that make you want to enter into a serious relationship, or want to avoid them?
•Do you feel that gender roles have changed in the last 10 years?

If you are interested in being a part of the Youth Media Blog-a-Thon, please email Eming Piansay at epiansay@newamericamedia.org

Sponsoring Organizations:
For over 15 years, YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia has been a leader in youth-produced content in the Bay Area. Through our active website (http://www.youthoutlook.org), YO!TV – a weekly 30-minute television show on Access 29 in San Francisco, and our weekly YO!Radio segments aired on KMEL 106.1, YO! gives young people a voice on the issues they most care about. YO! content is also regularly syndicated in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Oakland Tribune and more. The YO! blog has been active since 2007.

WireTap is a national news and culture magazine by and for socially conscious youth. Our online community promotes social justice, inspires action and gives young people a voice in the media. Wiretap provides free, daily content to over 60,000 monthly visitors and 14,000 weekly newsletter subscribers. Our award-winning journalism and youth commentary is syndicated every week on the Nation.com, AlterNet.org and Chicago Sun Times, college papers, and hundreds of our stories get linked to in widely read blogs and websites from Mother Jones blog to Fear of a Brown Blogger to social networking site MyBloc.net.