An overwhelming response to a youth editorial post at the London-based News Shopper, left editors at the paper choosing to employ two people to the role rather than one.

The search for a talented teenaged writer began after the newspaper decided to recruit “a younger voice” for the website to write about issues affecting themselves and their peers.

Andrew Parkes, group editor at News Shopper, said: “We produce a lot of content for adults on our website.

“But younger people are also important, so we really needed a younger voice on there too”.

News Shopper received more than 80 applications from young people wishing to share their opinions, and despite the selection process suffering a slight glitch, editors Andrew Parkes and Simon Bull were delighted with the final outcome.

Visitors to the News Shopper website were originally asked to rate a shortlist of articles from 1 to 10 and the person who scored the highest rating would be named youth editor.

Over-enthusiastic tactical voting, and calls from aggrieved parents, led to the paper calling off the voting process and instead a final decision was made to employ two youth editors, one male and one female.

Alison Moulds, (17), and 14-year-old Josh Tate were finally chosen as News Shopper’s first online youth editors and the pair have been showing great enthusiasm when writing about issues such as the environment, fair trade, anti-youth prejudice and their hobbies.

Andrew said: “We are really pleased, and Simon is amazed at the quality of the work being produced.

“If anything, they are producing too much, which is great!”

The youth articles, which are written on a weekly basis can be seen here Do you have a story about the regional press?
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