The Spin and I

We (Chris Morrill and Ben Tan) created the Étudiant because WHS's other "news source", the Spin, is mostly composed of editorials, and isn't doing its job as a "newspaper."

I wrote that more than a month ago, when Chris and I created the Étudiant. Along with my movie reviews, last night I submitted an editorial to The Spin about...The Spin. It explains in more detail why we feel that The Spin isn't doing its job.

Yet Another Editorial

I care. Those who know me well know it. Those who don’t, well, you just learned it, assuming you’ve been reading this. But my point is, I care about this little thing called The Spin. If it weren’t for The Spin, I wouldn’t go to the movie theater nearly as much. Sure, maybe I’d go see something like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, but paying eight bucks for Corpse Bride? I did it for The Spin.

I love this newspaper. I’m writing an editorial about it right now, but I only want to help it. See, if you ask me, The Spin has recently been going through an identity crisis. If you’ve read (or even skimmed) the last few issues, you get the impression that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Translation: the writers of The Spin can’t agree on what it should be.

In ways, The Spin’s like a “real newspaper”, like the Times or the Globe. This April’s issue had the cover stories “Ms. Freedman Talks with a WHS Freshman” and “Living the Swiss Life.” Looks like a newspaper. Open it up, skim it, and you’ll find six editorials. Yesterday’s (May 23 as of this typing) Globe had three. It makes me wonder: do WHS students care about current events, or would they rather read an article like “Give Us More Electives!” or “School Starts Too Early”?

In that case, why not just make The Spin a quarterly collection of opinions? I can see it now: we’d leave actual news to the Item and Observer, since they take space from great articles like “The Late Policy Sucks” and “Wait Until College to Get a Boyfriend”. But once that happens, The Spin wouldn’t be so great a title. No problem: we’d change the title to Piss and Moan Quarterly.

Or, we could make it like the other half of the recent issues, like a “real newspaper”. Something that non-students could take more seriously. Read an issue, ignore the editorials, and you’ll find some great stuff. There’s articles about the Math Team, the Drama Club, and faculty. My pal Tim Cushing interviewed a member of Death From Above 1979 last issue. And of course, not every opinion piece is that bad: that guy who does the movie reviews is particularly sharp.

But maybe I’m being a little too caring. Maybe a half-fact, half-opinion stack of paper stapled together is just what The Spin should be. I won’t pretend to be an expert.

I will say this: I’m getting tired of people crying and moaning about not getting what they want in life when they should be appreciating whatever they have. I for one appreciate what I see as a great power. We, the students, write The Spin. Not Ms. Tinker, not Ms. Shilling, but us.

If you and your friends send in a bunch of papers, whether they be fact or opinion, you’ll determine what the next issue will be like. If you, like me, desire a change around these parts, you can help make that difference by just writing an article. Why sit around and wait for that change when you can help make it?

But, of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.