update: kids at ‘the paper’ are mean

Add comment April 15th, 2008

i managed to watch “the paper” last night, the show i wrote about yesterday.

as i suspected, while the newspaper is the setting, and there’s a two-minute argument over grayscale, the show focuses on the drama of teenagers, which is a nice preview for me. i need to be reminded that my sweet little girls will be young ladies in another decade.

the pilot episode focuses on the fight to be editor-in-chief, and while most of her peers don’t want her to win, ashley is named to the top job by the teacher.

her “friends” were pretty mean to her through the process, but maybe i was like that in high school and didn’t even realize it. at least one of the girls told ashley to her face how she really felt: that she thought ashley was power-trippy. most of the others were just sarcastic or lied.

p.s. i was the editor of my high school newspaper (and i don’t remember how i was named, though in college i was “elected” to the editor’s job). and to show you how long ago that was, we printed out my high school paper on a dot-matrix printer.

i want my mtv again: ‘the paper’

Add comment April 14th, 2008

i’m a member of the music video generation. you know, back when mtv actually showed videos in the 1980s and geeky kids like me recorded “friday night videos” because i couldn’t stay up that late.

i’m no longer in mtv’s target audience (at age 35), so it’s a miracle i found out about its new reality show “the paper.” it starts tonight at 9:30. the trailer is here.

it’s about a competitive high school newspaper staff. while there appears to be a lot of typical high school stuff, it’s good to see that these students say they take journalism seriously. i might have to record this, but who knows when i will have time to watch it.

(footnote: i didn’t get my mtv until i went to college because we lived “out in the country,” so i’d have to visit my friends who lived “in town” to see it! the horror!)