The School Newspaper Has Old News!


I have been reading the school’s paper every once in a while since I have been attending Venice High, and I have not been as disappointed as I am now. This paper has bland topics and old information. There has been a general downward spiral of quality and interest during the past few issues, possibly even semesters.

The front page leaves a lot to be desired, with stories such as,“4,000 Soldiers Killed in Iraq,” and “ New Wheelchair Ramp to be Installed.” Students have either heard the news before, or really do not care. News almost one month old is not interesting; the Iraq story was released on all major presses on March 28th, and here we are showing it to our students three weeks later? Unacceptable! In addition to these dreary stories, we have countless grammatical usage errors. The editing is quite lacking in what I would call decent editing; for example, in the article, “ Pool Closed by City of Los Angeles,” there was a caption with a quote from Ms. Sabbah which stated her distaste on an issue, and not three sentences later is the exact same quote, laughing at the editors for their carelessness.

All in all, what I am trying to convey in this message is that the level of “professionalism” in the journalism at Venice High is far below standards. I know that our staff can accomplish far better things than this…piece of work. There are certainly more interesting stories to be found just waiting for the right journalist to write an article in a new and creative fashion. That is all I expect from this staff. So, good luck on the next issue, I am expecting great things.

Kevin Matheson, Junior




In mentioning that our editing is “lacking” you criticized the fact that we utilized a “caption with a quote” and then again used the same quote in the story. We were in fact using a “liftout or a pull quote,” in which a quotation is taken directly from a story, and then enlarged and made bold or italicized so as to highlight an interesting fact or comment.

-The Editors