Freedom of the Press

It's been another long, sleep-deprived week, and I feel like doing nothing productive today. But, I love my newspaper class for making me laugh and slightly ameliorating the stress of school, if that's even possible. We have a small staff that is chalk full of colorful personalities and heated debates. They always amuse me and make working on the paper all the more interesting.
I am the co-editor of the paper, or as my co-editor likes to say, "the hard-working, know-it-all co-editor", while he is "the slacker co-editor". I'm not bragging; it's true but to a point. We both split the duties pretty evenly, so he should give himself some more credit. My job mostly consists of advising, proofreading, motivating, and keeping people on track: easier said than done. I also contribute an article or two, but I mostly have to lead the group. We have a reasonable crew who gets the job done, albeit with roadblocks. Everyone's skills are at different levels; some of them are good writers, but some of them don't even have the basics mastered. They also lack the drive to get work done until the very last minute (don't we all?!!?). For this reason, we take an obscenely long time to get each issue out. I don't mind the casual attitude since our class is an elective, but I do wish people could use their time a bit more wisely. I also hope that everyone would consider revisions more carefully. The other co-editor and I spend a lot of time revising articles and editing pages, but sometimes, this effort isn't taken seriously by the rest of the staff. Oh well. It can't be perfect. In fact, it's far from perfect, but it's enough for now. The perfectionist in me always has problems with our paper, but I deal with them accordingly. I try not to become a dictator-like leader b/c one obvious part of being a leader is having the respect of your followers. That is very important, especially on our eccentric staff, where personalities frequently clash. Just the other day, I was discussing movies with the co-editor, who is a fellow film fanatic. One girl seemed irritated and yelled at us for being "film whores"! Lol. That's the kind of conundrum that ensues on a typical day in newspaper class. More tales of the paper after the jump.
More musings...
Time is always of the essence, especially with journalism. You learn early on as a high school journalist that time becomes an obstacle in more ways than on higher levels of journalism. Our paper takes weeks to develop, so we have to plan out which stories we want to write would still be relevant when we finally publish and distribute the issue. We end up wasting a lot of time in between finishing articles not dependent on time (usually editorials, pictures, and cartoons) and ones that have to be written closer to the time of publication (news and sports in particular). That's actually the point we are currently at, which is why we haven't done much in class this week. (Unless discussing the Super Bowl commercials and The Office counts as doing something!)
One occasional complication is that we don't have complete freedom to publish anything in the paper. Before we print and distribute an issue, we have to get it approved by the principal. This presents a problem b/c people always enjoy criticizing our school and would like to do so in an official manner. One guy wanted to write about the lack of organization with our school's new lockers: some people who were supposed to get new lockers didn't get them as planned, which caused quite the problematic uproar. Our teacher/advisor shot down this idea even though it would appeal the student body.
Speaking of which, student interest is another issue we as high school journalists face. Our staff is always pondering and discussing this when we plan issues. We're not always certain about what the student body wants to read about. In fact, the student body often doesn't even read the paper, which always peeves me. I've seen people fold it up into a paper airplane and then throw it someone. Blerg. As an editor, I'm desperately trying to change this. For our next issue, we're aiming for a more visual layout with more charts and graphics. I've noticed that teenagers hate reading a lot of text, and that certainly applies to our paper, as well as schoolwork. Hopefully, our new approach will encourage more people to read our publication that we all put so much effort into. (*sigh* No wonder writers in the real world are primarily jobless and dirt-poor. Please support writers!)
On another note, I haven't done a birthday shoutout in a while, but yesterday, IMDb informed me that one of my favorite actresses turned 45... Happy belated birthday to the lovely, refreshing, and ridiculously underrated Laura Linney! If you haven't caught any of her mesmerizing work, I would highly recommend You Can Count On Me, Love Actually, and The Savages for starters. She always brings a real and natural perspective to every film. Unfortunately, I feel she may never receive the proper recognition for her many great roles, namely an Oscar, but recently, she has been nabbing awards for her portrayal of Abigail Adams in the HBO miniseries John Adams. Congratulations Laura! =D [/tangent]
Coming attractions:
-Grammys on Sunday!, which I will probably mention early next week since I am writing an article about it for the paper.
-Anatomy of a Performance-Part 2 also coming this weekend, featuring two more outstanding artists.
Well, that's it. Going to catch some zzzzz's before my early start tomorrow morning. Forensics tournaments destroy my Saturdays. :(