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Journalism
Posted By: Den-Kara, on host 208.221.191.129
Date: Thursday, September 6, 2001, at 17:44:47
In Reply To: Re: Did Your Pop Song Lose Its Flavor...? posted by Stephen on Tuesday, September 4, 2001, at 22:19:35:

> Go write for your school's newspaper. Virtually every newspaper has some sort of Entertainment section, and this is what you want to do.

As sole editor of my school's paper, I could probably weasel my way into putting just about anything (within reason) into the paper. The only problem is money, which would allow for enough space to include an Entertainment and/or Humor column. We have the smallest budget we've had in my going-on-four years involved in journalism. Right now, we don't even have enough money to go to the Oregon State University Press Day.

I've written articles about cheese before...and clowns...and made flying chinchilla borders. One teacher in particular hated the fact that they were in there, and although I was intimidated by her opinion last year, this year (not to be rude) I really don't care much. It's my senior year, and I want to have as much (safe) fun as I possibly can, and I want to make the newspaper fun for the rest of the student body.

I attended an Editors-in-Chief camp during the summer, and I felt very intimidated. Everyone there came from schools of about 800-1,000 students. The guy from Portland said that at his school they have two journalism classes, each producing their own paper. Another person said they had a staff of 50 journalists. And everyone had about ten different editors. Everyone looked at me like I was nuts when I said, "Well, my school has about 400 students. I'm the only editor, my advisor lets us do our own thing, and we have to beg people to join journalism." They all had selection processes to go through, and the editors weren't ASKED or TOLD to be editors, as is the case at my school. Rather, they must be invited to go in for an interview (all journalists had to go through interviews to join, too). Also, while journalism is a class at my school, at all of theirs, it is a club. Meaning that it takes place after school, as well as during a class period. Many of the other editors spoke of staying until midnight on a school night to get things in by deadline. My advisor's very lenient about letting deadlines go by without punishing people who turn things in late. Also, the other people at the camp said they could boot people out of journalism. Umm...what else...they averaged two papers a month, and they all were AMAZING papers. I "accidentally" left copies of our paper at home, and I'm glad I did. I would have died of embarrassment. I always thought ours was pretty good, but now, frankly, I don't. The reason, though, is because we have a small budget (we only can afford 6 issues a year, and it takes us about a month to put out one paper--which I think is ridiculous). Anyway...I forgot what point I was making...oh, well.

Anyway, I'm going to try to squeeze in some cute, off-the-wall stuff this year. Also, I have been shocked consistently all of my years of high school by the fact that there have never been Senior Wills (not that I've seen, anyway). I don't care what it takes, I'm going to see to it that there ARE Senior Wills this year...I don't care if they're just photocopied pages we'll staple together and hand out or shove in the last paper of the year...there WILL be Senior Wills. I will leave my cheese to Forrest.

Speaking of my good ol' buddy, Forrest, he made me get my first unexcused tardy ever today. Well, it wasn't his fault really. First, though, I must describe his car, cuz it's funny.

He got an 80% on his driver's test, which surprised me, cuz he's a lead foot. But anyway, he has this DISGUSTING, puke blue (how puke can be blue, I dunno), 1978 Lincoln Continental. The thing looks HORRENDOUS! It's embarrassing to be seen in it...oh, maybe I shouldn't say that...I'm pretty sure it's illegal for me to ride with him as of now...not that I will be riding with him again anytime soon. Anyway, we went to McDonald's, which I think is disgusting, but since I was hungry, I obliged. Anywho, we didn't get one of our orders...yada yada...we had to drive back to get it. THEN he locked his keys in the car...and my advisor for journalism sent me to get a tardy slip, which was really surprising, cuz (not to be mean, only being honest) he's basically an old hippy who I thought would understand this predicament. Anyway, it was unexcused and I have no idea why...maybe I'm just naive.

I dunno why I'm going on and on about nothing right now...someone shut me up!

I'm tired now...methinks me brain be's fried from all the back-to-school stuff, Watson. Ah, methinks correctly, madam.

~Den-"I don't understand half the things I say"Kara

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