Transition Year students can win a week's work placement in The Irish Times. Send us your thoughts (200 words maximum) on a media-related topic - if your submission is published, the placement is yours.

Ciara Daly, St Clare's Comprehensive, Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim

Local radio provides a very necessary and useful service in rural Ireland. It notifies the community of deaths, births, local events, sales, marriages - everything that's happening in a community. It is a forum where people can express their views on all subjects - though most frequently it is used by people wishing to complain. Local radio stations are companions to the old and isolated in the community. Unfortunately they do not provide many services for the younger generation; this forces teenagers to listen to Dublin-based stations, which concentrate on the east coast. These stations can be quite boring when they are constantly referring to the traffic problems in the Dublin area, which naturally is of no interest to a teenager in Leitrim.

The best idea would be for local stations to expand their programmes for teenagers and try to attract new listeners - sacrificing, perhaps, some of the Golden Oldies and traditional Irish music programmes which seem to fill the evenings.

Rois in Fitzpatrick, Loreto College, Crumlin, Dublin

Many teenagers are not secure or well adjusted. This comes as no surprise, considering the material they are bombarded with in teen mags.

Take a typical 13-year-old girl stumbling through the early stages of a long and challenging journey through the teenage years. Who is she? She has just begun to notice how she looks; how do others see her? (Do they see her?) She can have a poor self-image.

The message sent to her through the teen mags is: look pretty, have all the right clothes, make-up, figure . . . and a boyfriend! Is this what she wants? The magazines tell her "Yes!" What about family, school, friendships, hobbies . . . ?

Teen mags are informative: how to get the skin, hair and figure perfect. And the boys. In achieving all the above we gain . . . yes, happiness. Message received.

Write to media scope by posting your comments to Newspaper in the Classroom, The Irish Times, 11-16 D'Olier Street, Dublin 2, or faxing them to (01) 679 2789.

Be sure to include your name, address and school, plus phone numbers for home and school.

Or you can use the Internet and email us at mediapage@irish-times.ie.

media scope is a weekly media studies page for use in schools. Group rates and a special worksheet service are available: FREEPHONE 1-800-798884 (8 a.m. to 5 p.m.). media scope is edited by Harry Browne.