Editor's note

As we thought about the best ways to approach this month's cover story on Latino teen parents, choosing our primary sources was easy. But attributing information to them proved more difficult than we initially realized.

Many news organizations have policies that prevent them from identifying children without a parent's permission. The legal definition (at least as far as the criminal justice system is concerned) of an adult is someone 17 and older. The Associated Press Stylebook used in most newsrooms defines children as under 18. But many newsrooms move cautiously when it comes to identifying children at all, opting for using first names only or pseudonyms, in an effort to minimize the harm that could be done to young sources by having their stories told so publicly.

But in writing about a group of young people who have taken on a very adult role--parenting--does it make sense to view them as children? Is a 16-year-old mother, for instance, still a child? And if she no longer lives with her own parents, isn't her permission to use her name good enough?

These were some of the questions we wrestled with over the past month. In the end, we compromised. At The Chicago Reporter, we err on the side of fully identifying sources, with only a few exceptions where the potential damage to them outweighs the greater good of our readers' right to know who they are, but doesn't prevent us from telling a story fully and accurately.

But given that these were teenagers, we also had many conversations with these young women--two of them are 17 and one is 16--to make sure they knew what it would mean for them to be named. They assured us they were comfortable with it, along with being photographed, agreeing it could help humanize an important story.

One young woman, however, is identified only by her first name. She was part of a group of teens introduced to us by staff members of a social service agency. The depth of Reporter Sarah Karp's questions caught them off guard. They felt they had put their clients in an uncomfortable position, uncertain the young women would have felt comfortable declining to answer a reporter's questions after she had been introduced to them by someone they trusted. Not identifying her in full seemed the best way to satisfy the folks at the agency, though it's noteworthy that the young woman herself told Karp she had no problem being named.

Once the naming debates were over, we also made a stylistic decision to use the first names of the young mothers on second reference. Some news organizations have policies against this as well, calling it a double-standard that could seemingly depict some sources on a different level from others. We decided the use of first names better reflects the teens' lives (they would rarely be called anything but their first names), but also agreed we need to revisit this issue as a staff.

This debate helped us realize that, as journalists, our efforts to minimize harm to the youth we cover may unwittingly reinforce and bolster some of the very stereotypes they battle.

Do readers, for instance, view a one-named source as a whole person? Does limiting the amount of biographical information we can share about teen parents create a one-dimensional depiction of their lives? And, if those mothers or fathers want their full names used, isn't it a bit presumptous for us as journalists to try to talk them out of it?

Over the rest of this year, we will continue to explore the issues faced by this population in the Chicago Matters: Our Next Generation series. It aims to inspire a regional conversation about how we view and think about a wide cross-section of young people, as well as the ways in which our public policies and institutions affect them.

And, as we engage in that conversation, we should also explore the decisions we make on behalf of those younger than we are, sometimes in the name of protecting them.

We welcome letters pertaining to our coverage. Send them to editor@chicagoreporter.com or 332 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 500, Chicago, Ill., 60604. Please include name, address and a daytime phone number, Letters may be edited for space and clarity.

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