My rant is really only aimed at The Badger Herald, The Daily Cardinal, and The Pointer, as those are the only papers I’ve read enough of to decide they suck. The original title of this post was “Why College Newspapers are Inherently Terrible”, but I decided that wasn’t fair. I believe that every student newspaper has innate goodness, but sometimes you get people (cough, everyone that works for The Pointer) who don’t understand that journalism should reflect as much as neutral viewpoint as humanly feasible, and that’s when problems start.

I have been keeping tabs on your blog since you first released the address, and I am liking what I see!

My first sadness is your contempt for high school publications. I tried to re-start the paper last year and it was hard. Publishing a monthly paper is REALLY hard especially trying to keep things relevant and interesting for people who don’t quite appreciate all of the work we do. I didn’t expect it to be the greatest thing in the world but I really needed it (to pad my resume as you say). And do you know how hard it is to stick with something when you distribute the paper at lunch and people crumple it up and spit on it right in your face? I think it says a lot about my character.

Secondly, if it weren’t for that paper I wouldn’t have any idea if I should actually try to major in journalism. The Daily Times doesn’t give internships to writers, only in the advertising department. And who really wants to work for Watertown Daily Times?

Thirdly, I agree The Badger Herald is terrible. But give college papers some credit. I just started my job at the Minnesota Daily and it’s a highly reputable publication.

So there’s my rant…
You should check out my blog, too.

As for high school newspapers, well, our’s was just doomed from the start. As I said, nothing interesting ever happened at our school – that’s not small town angst, that’s just the hard truth. Also, no one really seemed to carry the journalistic spirit in our grade, and hardly anyone could stand the teacher who oversaw the paper’s production (I liked her, but I was in the minority). So, with nothing to talk about and a small staff, the paper just ran with whatever garbage articles they could muster. One of my friends from high school reminded me that the April Fool’s Day edition of the paper was distributed a month after April Fool’s Day. That’s the perfect example of how the paper just didn’t have their shit together.

The only journalism that I did was in high school, and after writing one article for the paper my freshman year on the signs we made that were held up during an all class assembly saying things like, “NNHS is the Hitler of public schools!” And trying to explain why we were saying that. They didn’t allow the article because I wasn’t in the journalism class.

I think most schools want to keep their papers very bland so that they aren’t inciting possible riots and/or upheaval at the school.

That evening for you and Matt will a nostalgic memory for many moons to come! Almost as wild as the evenings that your mother, nephew, Sam and I stroll through the moonlit nights of Tivoli Island during a flashlight walk!!