This research examines how urban adolescents of color who are placed at risk of academic and social failure interpret and respond to noble and ignoble purposes constructed in media texts. Drawing from New Literacy Studies, which provide impetuses for educators and researchers to explore youth's literacy practices and media engagements as they occur and evolve in alternative teaching/learning contexts, this study uses participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and participant journals to determine youth's conceptions of purposes. These interpretive methods provide data sets that show how this particular group of youth are, or are not, responsive to noble and ignoble purposes. A Stanford Center on Adolescence 2008 "Youth Purpose Research Award" funded this research. (Contains 4 footnotes.)