The website WireTap is new-found favorite of mine. Heavy on advisers from Current TV, The Nation, and AlterNet, the site is a great platform for young (appears to be mostly college age) writers / content creators from the most diverse backgrounds I have ever seen in a single site. If you need to understand what young adults care about about, how they define their worlds, this site should be a regular stop in your information gathering missions.
Below is an excerpt from a recent perspective piece I enjoyed. Topics often include reactions to current events around the globe, stories about race, gender and identity. I also like that the students are paid for their submissions.
The 1996 launch of “Sex on Tuesday” at the University of California, Berkeley– birthplace of the 1960s national student activist movement — triggered the campus newspaper sex column phenomenon.
Within a few years, the sex column had spread to campuses across the country, becoming the “most publicized, electrifying, and divisive phenomena in student journalism,” in the words of Dan Reimold, leading expert on the student newspaper sex column.Reimold estimates that “during any given semester more than 200 sex and dating columns are being published in U.S. student newspapers, magazines, and online outlets…. What’s most important here is perspective. In the mid-nineties, the number of student sex columns: zero.” In addition to increasing student readership, the proliferation of student sex columns has drawn national attention.
Entertainment is usually a key reason behind the publication of sex columns, but the writing is not all about fun. These controversial pieces have proved battlegrounds for the rights of the student press and “appropriate” subjects for publication (ironically, only increasing their popularity and fueling the movement).
Born Curious 
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