Glendale Heights student named Time For Kids reporter

Yousuf Khan is contributing to a magazine that has recent headlines on the presidential primaries, Super Bowl and the refugee crisis in Europe.

He must be a grizzled journalist, a veteran writer who hates nothing more than getting scooped by the competition, right?

"I was really happy," he says when he got the job. "Right away, I told my mom."

Yousuf is 14. And while he's not yet a coffee-guzzling, notepad-carrying reporter, he is getting published in Time for Kids, a weekly print and online magazine geared toward students.

"I'm glad that I've gotten this opportunity to show my thoughts and my writing skills with such a large audience," he said.

An eighth-grader at Hadley Junior High in Glen Ellyn, Yousuf is one of 10 Time for Kids reporters chosen from about 300 applicants in a national competition. And since the gig started this school year, he's already honed the art of the interview and proved a versatile writer.

His first assignment? A book review of the fantasy "Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Sword of Summer."

"Although the characters are in fantastic situations, they still respond in human ways," Yousuf writes. "Sure, they have magical abilities and some can even fly. But they also show compassion, happiness, and humor."

He's also profiled a 9-year-old from California who organizes a bowling tournament that's raised more than $30,000 for her hometown's animal shelter.

"That's really impressive, and shows me that I can accomplish something like that," he said.

Yousuf says he's learned to have a two-way conversation with his sources - not a formal Q-and-A - that puts them at ease and helps him humanize their stories. Kind of like one of his favorite professional journalists, Anderson Cooper, an anchor Yousuf says comes across as personable, "relatable."

"It's not just the third-person view on it," he said. "He seems like he actually cares."

Before his position ends later this year, the poised Glendale Heights teen hopes to report on how presidential candidates have portrayed Muslim Americans (his family is Muslim).

He hasn't put too much thought into his career goals. First comes high school.

But journalism, he says, is "a good way to let other people see the experience of others."