In the process of documenting Teens in Print’s twenty-year history, we had the privilege of interviewing people who played fundamental roles in the creation of the program. Today we are honored to share the story of Betty Southwick, who was the first director of WriteBoston, from 2002-2016, and was influential in building Teens in Print. In 2014 it was Southwick’s fundraising strategy that allowed Teens in Print to continue after a sudden decline in funding.
Betty Southwick
Director of WriteBoston, 2002-2016
The idea for WriteBoston emerged from ReadBoston, a non-profit focused on early literacy and building reading skills from pre-K to third grade, created by Harvard School of Education professor Rick Weisboard and supported by the City of Boston through the mayor’s office. A colleague of Weisboard, Jake Murray, wrote the early grants that founded WriteBoston, with support from Mayor Thomas Menino. Betty Southwick then applied to become WriteBoston’s founding director. During her interview, Southwick remembers telling Mayor Menino, “My jobs have all been outside the city of Boston. I want to work in the city of Boston, I live in the city of Boston, my kids go to school here, I want to work for my community.”
From 2002 to 2003, WriteBoston’s main goal was to establish writing coaches in Boston Public Schools (BPS), after noticing the negative influence the MCAS state tests had on writing taught in schools. “I think it’s improved since then,” says Southwick, reflecting on the situation, “there was a real dearth of writing because when MCAS was so strongly pushed, it was all about getting ready for the test. You had reading comprehension, but you didn’t have writing composition taught in the classrooms.” In other words, BPS high school and middle school students were taught how to read and prove they understood their reading but had no way to express themselves clearly through writing.
Southwick’s early stewardship of WriteBoston has allowed us to maintain our identity as an independent nonprofit organization. It has never depended on the City of Boston for dollars, and even in our earliest years, WriteBoston paid the mayor’s office for the use of human resources and payroll management professionals.
Initial funding for Teens in Print came from The Boston Globe Foundation, and it was their director, Leah Bailey, who first pitched Southwick the idea of Teens in Print, which was based on city-wide high school magazine and journalism projects in New York City and San Francisco. WriteBoston high school writing coaches then began the process of getting a group of student journalists together, asking, ‘What do you think, would you like to write for a newspaper?’ and ‘Would you come after school to write it? Would you gather? Would you do that?’ Thanks to the encouragement of WriteBoston educators like Kelly Knopf-Goldner, Southwick recalls “we got a pretty good response.”
As WriteBoston’s director, Southwick kept busy orchestrating several writing initiatives and was unable to be as hands-on with Tipsters as she would have liked to be. Thankfully, Teens in Print was in good hands at The Boston Globe under the leadership of Knopf-Goldner and Bailey. Southwick remembers fondly the generosity of The Boston Globe Foundation and the welcoming energy of The Globe reporters and editorial staff. The Foundation provided pizza and snacks for students, staff shared their expertise and experiences as professional journalists, and 20,000 copies of each issue were printed and distributed to every BPS high school. The perk of physical distribution was especially meaningful to Southwick, “it felt like a gift to these kids, to be able to have a hard copy to share with their friends at school. They could go home and show their grandparents.”
Southwick once tagged along on a Teens in Print Summer Journalism Institute tour of the State House and discovered along with the educational staff that the majority of their students had not been to the Downtown Boston area. “We were shocked. Never thought about it, you know. They had it confused with City Hall because they had never been in that area.” This realization confirmed for Southwick the necessity of Teens in Print, and specifically its summer programming (Summer Journalism Institute – SJI), “This is what we need to do for these kids. It’s exposure.” This exposure often went far beyond Boston, as Southwick recalls there was a Youth Journalism Conference in Colorado one year that Moon and Knopf-Goldner were able to take a couple of teens to.
The Boston Globe Foundation was crucial to Teens in Print programming from the very beginning, it was the sole benefactor from 2004 to 2014, providing $100,000 in funding. This paid for educators, support staff like Youth Leaders, a website domain, and of course the printing and snacks provided directly from The Globe. In 2015, The Boston Globe experienced structural changes under a new ownership. In the spring of that year, The Foundation had to make some tough choices, and TiP’s $100,000 of funding was cut. They would not receive any more funding, not even to carry out the already planned for 2014 Summer Journalism Institute.
Faced with disaster, Southwick resolved to fundraise as she had never fundraised before. “This whole program will go down the drain if we don’t have $100,000,” she said. “In some ways, it was a nice leverage point. So we got it. We got it through The Calderwood. We got it through individuals. The Globe Foundation wouldn’t give us a penny.”
Southwick remembers fondly a grant from Starbucks, which allowed Teens in Print to host an open mic night in one of their stores, “They had microphones and kids got up to read the poetry as well as somebody who was a slam poet.” This unique form of fundraising was so much more impactful than the traditional benefit dinners. It highlighted the students who make Teens in Print what it is, as well as tied in everything WriteBoston was doing at the time to further writing education in schools. “We tried lots of different ways to encourage writing, because we just didn’t see that in schools.” Southwick says, “So author visits and poetry slams, and anything we could think to do, we did.” Promoting a broad spectrum of writing helped to establish the importance of Teens in Print.
Southwick attests that the purpose of Teens in Print lies in its ability to empower youth to write for their own satisfaction as well as to benefit their communities. “I’ve found that it’s one thing to write a story for your teacher, and it’s one thing to get your composition right, or your poem right, or to do something to get a grade… but when you see your name in print, there is another level of investment for these kids to learn to write and to find their voice.” Prior to sitting down with us, Southwick had read over some recently released Teens in Print articles from the 2024 website release, and found them very impactful. “Those kids are thinking and they’re writing.” She says. “It’s not just composing and making sure your grammar is correct. Those kids are thinking about their issues. They’re putting their arguments together.”
When asked what she enjoyed most about Teens in Print, Southwick explained she has a soft spot for the publication parties, the culminating events of each semester, when everything is fully in print or posted to the website. “I remember going to the publication parties, watching the kids get so excited. Just made you feel like, yes, this is what we should be doing.”