The Town Liar

I don't understand the point of school newspapers. They're a waste of paper. I mean yeah, they can provide valuable practice for someone looking into becoming a journalist or something like that, but must they force it onto the rest of us? I'm not saying it's all horrendously written. I've seen high school-level kids who can write better than some published authors. I'm saying that there's nothing for them to write about.

Do you remember those TV shows where they would have that one episode where the main character gets on the school newspaper and then breaks this huge scandal about some teacher? And then do you remember how disappointed you were when you found out that that will never happen? If there was some huge thing where a teacher got fired over sexual harassment, the journalism teacher sure as hell isn't going to let some kid write about it. That's against the rules. And we can't have that. Because that would be too awesome.

And they aren't allowed to write honest reviews about school plays or anything either. Because then (gasp) someone's feelings might get hurt! Is this preparing kids for the real world? Not really. If no one ever tells you, hey, you sucked, won't that result in some kind of ego problem in the human population. Oh wait, it already did!

So I say either drop the whole thing altogether and just make journalism a class where you actually, you know, learn how to write, or just let kids write about whatever the hell you want. The sharp increase in teenage crying would be a reward by itself.