“At Manhattan’s elite Stuyvesant High School, only 10 out of the 766 admitted students in the 2020–21 freshman class were Black. At Staten Island Technical, another of New York City’s eight competitive, specialized high schools, this year, only a single black student — in a freshman class of roughly 1,320 — was offered admission. The lack of Black and Hispanic students admitted into New York City’s best public schools is more disturbing, education experts contend, when compared to the racial makeup of students in New York City’s public schools: 70 percent are Black or Hispanic. In light of they, they want to overhaul admissions policies of these elite public high schools.”

“As recent calls to “defund the police” sweep the nation, some students who have police in their schools feel conflicted about their safety. Shadowproof spoke to students in New York, who felt the presence of police is overwhelming in most cases. However, they see police as their only protection against…

“While some young people might not be able to vote yet, they are leveraging social media to educate themselves and their peers on topics ranging from gun violence to racial justice to climate change. It isn’t unusual for young teens to have hundreds — even thousands — of followers. And…

It’s a lot worse than you think — I wrote a reported piece about American’s local journalism crisis and how Andrew Yang was the only presidential candidate that proposed legitimate solutions (or even looked like he cared about the crisis at all). The piece won one of my two National Silver Medals in 2020 from the Scholastic Writing…

Listen to The Writer’s Co-Op, subscribe to Freelancing with Tim, and reach out to your local editor (in that order). — Listen to The Writer’s Co-Op. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s my tweet about it. Basically, Wudan Yan and Jenni Gritters made an excellent podcast specifically about the business of freelancing. Why is it so important? Well, writing might be what you love to do but we also live…

How one happenstance email landed me as an apprentice at Dustlight Productions and working with Obama. — It was May 2020 I had just started listening to podcasts like The Daily with Michael Barbaro. Not because I had some unquenchable curiosity but it was new and I was bored, and I consider myself a journalist and this was a new kind of journalism for me. Listening to…

Bipartisanship shouldn’t be at the expense of millions of Americans. — President Joe Biden promised Georgia voters on the eve of the election that if they voted Blue and gave Democrats control of the Senate, $2,000 checks would be sent out “immediately.” It has been two weeks since he has been inaugurated as President. This week, he met with top Republicans…

I’m in high school now, but I’m scared of the vitriol I’ll face as a Black man covering the news — Former President Donald Trump branded the news media the “enemy of the people” on dozens of occasions during his time in office, whether to castigate a journalist on Twitter for unfavorable press coverage or to incite chants of “CNN sucks” at campaign rallies. The phrase “enemy of the people” has…

An open letter to social media users everywhere. — Over the recent months, especially as it pertains to racial justice, many users on platforms like TikTok have called on major influencers like the D’Amelio sisters, James Charles, and Loren Gray to speak on instances of injustice, circulate petitions, and spread resources that could solve the problem. Many users, however…