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ShareGod bless Amanda Lorber, a senior at Cypress Bay High School in Weston, Fla., who says “Journalists are the most important part of the world.”
Oh, a woman after my own heart. Say it loud and proud.
Amanda is editor-in-chief of the Circuit, an award-winning student publication that serves as the setting for MTV’s new reality series “The Paper” (10:30 p.m. EDT Mondays).
You heard right. A school newspaper. On MTV.
The show marks a real departure for the youth-centric cable network. It’s not “The Real World,” or “Laguna Beach,” or “The Hills.” Rich, hot-looking kids aren’t making out in Jacuzzis. They’re not slamming shots in some raucous club. They’re not prancing about in skimpy bikinis on spring break.
Instead, the show just focuses on smart, normal kids going to class, sacrificing large chunks of their social lives and pouring their passion into a ... newspaper.
Excuse me while I clear the lump in my throat.
And now permit me to ask: Can MTV actually help to make print journalism cool again? Oh, one can certainly dream.
There was a time, of course, when newspapering was undeniably cool. A time when Woodward and Bernstein and “All the President’s Men” had dreamy-eyed youngsters everywhere grabbing their notebooks and jamming their way into J schools.
This was the wave I rode into my own student newspaper experience at St. Mary’s High School in Stockton, Calif. - also right around the time when Joe Rossi, a hotshot reporter, was exposing corruption and taking down sleazeballs on the TV show “Lou Grant.”
After starting out as a political cartoonist, I tried my hand at some news reporting and then moved to sports - blissfully unaware that all those late nights hunched over a typewriter (yes, a typewriter) were paving the way to an exciting, challenging career that would put me in touch with a vast array of remarkable people and take me to major cities all over the country.
Alas, print journalism has lost much of its luster in recent years. Scandals involving Janet Cook and others have undermined our credibility. Competition from the Internet has chewed into our profits. And painful economic realities have led to downsizing and diminished pay scales.
To add insult to injury, newspaper types repeatedly have been told that we no longer matter to the younger generation - that today’s kids are too busy spending time with YouTube, MySpace and Nintendo to pay any attention to us. Sort of makes you feel like the crabby old uncle who gets ignored at family get-togethers.
That’s why “The Paper” seemed like a gift from heaven when it premiered a few weeks ago. A show about ambitious, brainy student-newspaper geeks from a network that supposedly has its finger on the pulse of America’s youth culture? We’re so there.
Just one problem: “The Paper,” while certainly worthwhile, has yet to live up to my lofty hopes. For one thing, Amanda’s a bit of a dork - a power-hungry, show-tunes-loving Pollyanna who fails to see that she doesn’t have the respect of her staff. Seizing upon this dynamic, the producers seem obsessed with turning her into one of those caricaturized love-to-hate-her females that TV thrives upon.
Consequently, “The Paper,” in some ways, is no different from a typical reality show. We get plenty of scenes showing Amanda’s frenemies talking behind her back. And we get lots of sniping, jealousy, conflict, duplicity and shameless two-faced behavior. In other words, it’s “Survivor” with pimples.
What we don’t get - at least not so far - are very many scenes of the kids actually working on the newspaper: hashing out story ideas, debating important topics they want to cover, or wrestling with grammar and ethics. “The Paper,” it seems, has essentially buried the lead.
Obviously, I realize the best way for a show like this to send viewers running for “The Hills” is to get too entrenched in the details. And based on all the tabloid attention lavished upon bickering former BFFs Lauren and Heidi, it’s the personal stuff that MTV kids seem to dig.
Still, why not at least give it a shot? If handled judiciously, the student newspaper can be used as a prism through which to learn about the issues that are of importance to our teens and what they hold dear. And it would vividly demonstrate that taking journalism classes is an excellent way for students to learn about deadline discipline, working toward a common group goal and how to actually make a difference with their words.
I know. That’s a lot to expect from the network that gave us “Beavis and Butt-head” and “Jackass.” But the fact that MTV has made room for an Amanda Lorber is, of itself, encouraging. And with several episodes left in the show’s run, I remain hopeful that “The Paper” can step it up and inspire a whole new generation of young Woodwards and Bernsteins.
