The Trojan Times Review #2
November 23, 2004

As TTT's editor accurately assured me in an e-mail, "Trust me your critism will not be so easy to make next issue which for your knowlege will be coming out approximately the 22nd of this month," this month's issue of our school paper is a great improvement upon last month's issue. However, it is still not without its shortcomings. Thus, I bring you review number two...

Page one and page two were of good quality, with only a handful of minor grammatical errors. The articles were informative and easy to read. This time, the "News Briefs" section was even completely up-to-date! I can only imagine how hard that must have been.

Pages three, four, and five were the obligatory sports pages. Page three confused me a little with its contradictory spellings of a certain cheerleader's last name. So, which is it- "Weinman" or "Weinmen"? Headline and caption say the former, while the article says the latter. Pages four and five contained pictures of the fall senior athletes. I heard a complaint about there not being a cross country picture, but I suppose the article on page five is meant as a replacement for that. While printing these photos was fine, I would be encouraged if pictures of non-athletic groups and teams were pictured as well. What about debate or quiz bowl? They deserve recognition as well.

Now comes my favorite section, the Opinion pages. I'll go over these page-by-page.

Page Six

"Sugars and sweets"
The author of this opinion piece seems to give contradictory conclusions. While she says that the school should keep its vending machines, she also says that she wouldn't miss them if they were gone because students might begin to eat healthier. She ends her article by stating that the school will most likely not remove the machines because they provide funding, they may indeed be removed someday. This article leaves readers wanting more information. By mentioning the funding issue, the author brought up a new aspect of the issue which deserves to be explored. Perhaps a more substantial way to explore the issue would be to chronicle the funding v. health aspect of vending machines in schools.

"Frosh transitions: Waste of time"
While the article's headline implies that the author's opinion of freshman transitions is negative, the article itself provides no such insight. It gives quotes from two students on opposite sides of the issue, but the author never gives her own opinion, and thus, the article does not belong on the opinion page.

"Civil rights ripped from same sex couples"
Overall, a good article (I do agree with the author's stance). However, I think the author went off on a tangent when she started writing about other supposed sins. While I understand what she was trying to say, I think this portion of the article was unnecessary, and she should have stuck to defending same-sex marriage.

"Speaking out: How do you feel about Bush winning the election?"
This has nothing to do with the newspaper itself, but I have issues with the opinions of those interviewed. The first respondent, a freshman, said that "Bush won because the world was doing fine when he was the president, and he will choose the right way to keep the war from going on further. Bush will do the right thing for our country because he won the election." Does this poor girl live in a bubble? In which world does she live? Also, I hope she has not forgotten that Bush was the one who started the war in the first place. Her last statement defies logic. By her reasoning, whoever is elected will "do the right thing."
The senior repondent proclaimed that Kerry "never said what he was going to do for our country." Again, in which world are these people living? I mean, really...
As for the "article" as a whole, I don't see why it needed a credit for an author, since she did not state her own opinion and did not provide any sort of summary.

Page Seven

"Let's hear it for sobriety!"
More contradictory conclusions. First, the author says that during her time in Europe, she thought of alcohol as "just another beverage." However, when she moved to America, after "one too many talk show episodes or what," she "made the realization that alcohol is a substance that has the ability to ruin people." Sounds like a problem with Americans and our television programs, not alcohol. Anyway, the main point of the article seems to be "don't drink, but if you do, do it responsibly." She uses the old excuse of "opinions are right depending on the person," which is not always the case. She claims that underage drinking is a "personal choice that should be respected, no matter what you decide." I'm sorry, but I don't feel the need to be told to unconditionally respect party-hardy morons who break laws and endanger others ("She's good at drunk driving!" -a cheerleader the first day of school this year).

"Just playing punk"
Amen.

"Letter from a Democrat"
The inclusion of this gives me great hope, and I share the author's sentiments.

"Open Campus: Right or privilege"
The author included the prediction that long lunch lines would diminish if we were to have open campus in the list of cons of open campus. Like many of the other short (aka filler) articles in this paper, this article lacks a clear conclusion. The author does not give his opinion.

Also on page seven is a disclaimer that states, "The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the writers and in no way reflect the opinions of Post Falls School District." If this is true, then why is the newspaper staff still restricted in its article content? You know, I'm almost thinking that disclaimer had to be put there because of the overall liberal slant of this issue... (I'm half-joking).

On page eight, the interview was Mr. Kracht was informative, although a little difficult to read because each answer seemed like the longest sentence of all time, and I have no idea whose fault that was because it could have either been the newspaper staff or Mr. Kracht, and I just don't know because I have never met Mr. Kracht and I have never met the interviewer so I have no idea how either of them write or if they know what periods and semicolons are, because there are a lot of commas in there, which is probably because they were necessary, but still, they could have been broken up by some longer pauses or something like that, so I hope that next time that will be taken into consideration by both the interviewers and interviewees involved, so if that happens, I will be glad.

Annnnyway, this was kind of hard to catch because the proper noun in question was not properly capitalized, but Mr. Kracht said that because the gym is always being hogged by athletics, the Christmas choir concert might have to be at Real Life. *smacks head on keyboard* It just gets more and more... I don't know what, but it isn't good...

On page nine, I'm glad that the article about the foreign exchange student was not just an interview (like last month), but a full-fledged article.

I'm so glad to see that Kirk Duval was made Student of the Moth.

I'm also glad to see a copied-and-pasted recipe that will never be put to use by PF students.

Oh, look, it's another filler article about someone's car!

More copy-and-paste fun- it's horoscopes!

I find those quotes on page ten neither entertaining nor necessary. They seemed like something thrown in at the last minute because of a lack of anything more substantial to include. Same thing goes for the "Top ten 80's songs" and "Upcoming movies." I commend the reviews of Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Colored Museum. Oh no, there's that creepy acne ad again... WHAT THE FARK IS "PLASMA ABLATION"?!!!!!!!1111 >=O

On page twelve, we get another video game summary, this time of Halo 2. Someone I talked to said there were factual inaccuracies within the summary, but I can't verify that since I'm not a player of... those sort of games (don't ask).

I found the review of the new Jimmy Eat World album to be good, however, I have issue with anyone who thinks the band is "one of the greatest bands ever" (note: the reviewer did not say whether or not she shares this opinion).

Those redneck jokes are.... sophomoric... HAR HAR HAR.

Finally, I am glad to see the vague concert ad photocopies absent in this issue, replaced with an article.

Final Thoughts

By far, this issue of our "wonderful" school paper was much better than the first one. The impression I got from the paper's editor was that I was "making fun of" it for the sake of being mean, when in reality, I truly wanted them to improve. The criticism they were receiving up until my first review was apparently not clear enough, and thus, I reacted by pointing out their every inaccuracy. Obviously my message was received, and I am glad to see the improvements that were made. There were still some problems, but I believe that with each successive issue, the newspaper staff will improve and begin to take their task more seriously and professionally. In turn, I will be right here behind them, ready to criticize or praise- the choice is up to them.