The Landry News (6 page)

He said, “Yes? Oh—hi, Cara. What can I do for you?”

Cara was nervous. She held the copy of
The Landry
News
behind her back and, trying to smile, she said, “You know that project Joey and I wanted to go to the library for? Well, it's done, and I wanted to show it to you . . . here.” And Cara handed him the newspaper.

Mr. Larson leaned forward across his desk to take it, acting surprised. “Project? Oh, yes . . . the project in the library.” Looking over the newspaper quickly and then back up at Cara's face, he said, “Yes, I remember—I asked you if it was going to be a good project . . . What do you think? Are . . . are you happy with the way it turned out?”

Cara gulped and nodded. “Uh-huh. We had to work kind of quickly, and there's not all that much in it, but . . . but we like the paper, and I . . . and we just wanted you to have a copy.”

“Well . . . thank you, Cara,” said Mr. Larson, a little haltingly. “I'll enjoy reading this.”

Cara nodded, smiled awkwardly, and said, “You're welcome,” and backed away from Mr. Larson's desk. She turned and headed for her space in the back comer of the room.

Mr. Larson leaned back in his chair and held up
The Landry News
to get a better look at it. He really didn't know what to expect. As he scanned the page, his eye fell to the lower right-hand corner of the paper—to the editorial.

From the Editor's Desk

New Looks

The Landry News
has a new look this week. A lot of people helped to make the improvements. Without Mr. Larson, Ms. Steinert, Joey DeLucca, Ed Thomson, LeeAnn Ennis, Sharon Gifford, and Alan Rogers, the changes and also some of this week's stories would not have been possible.

This paper has taken another new look this week, a look at what a newspaper is for. Above all, a newspaper has to tell the truth. Telling the truth can sometimes make people angry. Does that mean that a newspaper should try to stay away from a story that might bother someone? It all depends on the thought behind the newspaper—the newspaper's heart.

A mean-hearted newspaper tries to find out things that are bad, and then tries to tell the truth in a way that will hurt others. Newspapers can get famous that way, but they don't do much good—for anybody.

A good-hearted newspaper tries to tell the truth in a way that helps people understand things better. A good-hearted newspaper can tell the same story as a mean-hearted paper, but it tells the story in a different way because it's for a different reason.

As a reminder that
The Landry News
is trying to be a good-hearted newspaper, starting with the next edition, below the name of the paper, there will be a new motto: Truth and Mercy.

And that's the view this week from the
News
desk.

Cara Landry, Editor in Chief

Mr. Larson had started slowly swiveling his chair around toward the chalkboard when he was about halfway through the editorial. He could feel his eyes misting up, and he was pretty sure someone would be watching him while he read the paper. When Mr. Larson finished it, he smiled as he blinked hard, and he reached for his coffee to help gulp away the lump in his throat. He hadn't felt this good about being a teacher for a long, long time.

After a minute, Mr. Larson got up and walked back toward Cara's mini-office. Now it was Cara's turn to pretend she didn't see someone coming.

Looking down on her over the top of the tripod map, Mr. Larson said, “Excuse me, Cara . . . would you happen to have an extra copy of this newspaper? My wife's a teacher, too, and I just know she'd love to read this editorial. It's really a good piece of writing.”

Beaming with pleasure, Cara said, “Sure . . . sure, Mr. Larson. Here's another copy.”

  *  *  *

The second edition of
The Landry News
was a big hit. All seventy-five copies had been distributed in less than six minutes.

And late Friday afternoon, one copy of
The Landry News
ended up on the desk of Dr. Philip K. Barnes, Principal.

A COPY OF the second edition found its way to the office because the principal's secretary, Mrs. Cormier, had found one
on the floor in the hallway. She thought Dr. Barnes would enjoy reading the article about the best teachers.

Dr. Barnes sat down at his desk and read every word of the newspaper carefully, nodding and smiling now and then. This was good, clean fun—excellent writing, a fine learning experience. The bit about the top-ten least-favorite foods was cleverly done, and the story about favorite teachers was written in a very positive way. The writers didn't take any cheap shots. There was no foul language. There was no criticism of the school, the school administration, or school policies. There was nothing even a little bit controversial about the second edition of
The Landry News.

But when Dr. Barnes read the editorial, his eyes
narrowed, and his heartbeat quickened. A scowl formed on his broad, fleshy face, and his nostrils flared and quivered. He reached for a red pen, took off the cap, and starting over, he read through the entire paper again, looking for a problem, any problem. But when he was done, he had only circled one item on the whole page. It was in the editorial. He had drawn a heavy red circle around one name: Mr. Larson.

Dr. Barnes had strong opinions about Mr. Larson. For the seven years Dr. Barnes had been the principal of Denton Elementary School, Mr. Larson had been a constant problem.

Dr. Barnes didn't
hate
Mr. Larson. That would be too strong a word—too emotional. This had nothing to do with feelings, he told himself. This was a matter of professionalism. Dr. Barnes
disapproved
of Mr. Larson because Mr. Larson did not behave
professionally.
For Dr. Barnes, education was serious business, and Mr. Larson took his educational responsibilities too lightly.

Dr. Barnes opened his desk drawer and took out the key to the file cabinet where he kept the records about each teacher at Denton Elementary School. Swiveling around in his chair, he unlocked and opened the wide file drawer. It wasn't hard to find Mr. Larson's file. It was three times fatter than any other file in the drawer.

Every year Dr. Barnes got letters about Mr. Larson from worried parents. Parents asked if it was normal to have no homework in social studies, no homework in reading, and no homework in English—no homework
at all
for the
whole year!
Parents wrote to ask if their children could be transferred to the red team, and the real reason was always the same: getting out of Mr. Larson's class.

At the end of every school year each teacher was required to have a meeting with the principal. It was called a performance review. Dr. Barnes flipped through the stack of performance review sheets he had filled out for Mr. Larson—one for each of the last seven years. Poor. Poor. Unacceptable. Poor. Unacceptable. Unacceptable, and—Unacceptable.

At the bottom of each review form, there was room for a brief statement from the teacher. Over the past seven years, every statement from Mr. Larson had been pretty much the same. Turning to last year's review sheet, Dr. Barnes gritted his teeth and read what Mr. Larson had written:

It is clear that Phil and I have very different philosophies of education. I sadly acknowledge that he objects to some of my methods and practices.

Sincerely,

Karl A. Larson, Teacher

Many parents thought that Mr. Larson should not be a teacher. Several school board members thought that Mr. Larson should be fired, and several other board members thought it would be nice if Mr. Larson retired—early.

But as every principal and every school board knows, getting rid of a teacher is not an easy thing to do. There has to be something serious, something provable, something that violates school policies, or something that violates the law.

Dr. Barnes closed up Mr. Larson's fat file folder, put it back in the drawer, shut the cabinet, locked it, and dropped the key back into its place.

He set his copy of
The Landry News
in the center of his desk blotter. Then he laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair. He smiled. He had a good feeling about this little newspaper. This situation had possibilities. This could turn out to be just what a lot of people had been hoping for.

Sitting up suddenly, Dr. Barnes reached for his
phone. He punched Mrs. Cormier's extension. He could hear her bustling around behind him out in the main office area, no doubt getting ready to leave. He could have swiveled his chair around and talked to her, but he enjoyed using the phone. It seemed more official.

The phone on Mrs. Cormier's desk rang one, two, three, four times. She finally answered. “Yes, Dr. Barnes?” There was an edge to Mrs. Cormier's voice. It was four-fifteen on a Friday, and she was in no mood for secretary games. Standing at her desk with her coat and hat on, Mrs. Cormier could see Dr. Barnes sitting there, fifteen feet away, drumming on the desk with his fingers. Really—how hard could it be for him to just swing around, smile, and
talk?

“Uh, yes . . . Mrs. Cormier, um . . . please put a note into Mr. Larson's box for me. I want to meet with him Monday, right after school—
right
after school. It's a matter of some importance.”

Mrs. Cormier hung up her phone and called through the open door, “Monday is Columbus Day, Dr. Barnes. But I'll leave him a note about a meeting on Tuesday, and then I'll be going. Have a good long weekend, now.”

Mrs. Cormier scrawled a hasty note onto a sheet of Dr. Barnes's stationery, stuffed it into Mr. Larson's mail slot, and was out the door in thirty seconds.

ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON Mr. Larson called the class to order. He wrote three words on the chalkboard, from left to right: Positive, Neutral, Negative.

Mr. Larson said, “An editorial writer has only got a little bit of space, so every word has to be chosen for power.” Tapping the board as he said the key words, Mr. Larson continued, “The words a writer chooses can be positive, negative, or neutral. Is the writer building something up? That's positive writing. Tearing something apart? That calls for negative punches. And if the writer is just exploring, just looking all around an issue, that's a neutral treatment.”

Cara raised her hand. Mr. Larson said, “Question, Cara?”

“But if an editor is taking a negative position on something like war or drugs, wouldn't that really be positive?”

Mr. Larson said, “Yes, and no. Yes, the
effect
might be
positive. But the
treatment
—the words themselves and the images they communicate—they would be negative. Now, everyone, look over the editorials you clipped. Let's get some lists going up here, positive, neutral, and negative.”

For ten minutes the kids peppered Mr. Larson with words and phrases, and he wrote them down as quickly as he could.

The negative column filled up fastest with words like
stupid, disgraceful, foolish, laughable, wasteful, outraged, idiotic, scandalous, uninformed, half-baked, shamefully.

Positive words and phrases included
generously, public-spirited, wise, beneficial, commendable, carefully researched, useful, honorable, good.

Neutral words or phrases were a lot harder to find. In fact, the kids only found five:
apparently, clearly, not certain, understandably, presumably.
Then Mr. Larson led a rousing class discussion, more like a shouting match, about which kind of editorial treatment was best. Everyone finally agreed that there were times and places for all three kinds.

Reaching over to his desk, Mr. Larson grabbed a sheet of paper and taped it up onto the chalkboard. The class hushed. It was a copy of
The Landry News.

“I know you've all seen this new and improved edition of
The Landry News,”
he said. “And I know from
the condition of the room and my shrinking newspaper stacks that you've all been looking at a lot of
other
newspapers, too.” Mr. Larson smiled. “So give me some opinions. How is
The Landry News
different from the other papers you've been looking at—and how is it the same?”

No one said anything. “Come on, now,
we're
not being negative here, we're being neutral. In fact, we have every reason to be very positive.” Pointing at the newspaper, he said, “This is quite a big change to happen in one week. I'm not asking for comments about the paper, just tell me—how is it
similar
to the other ones you've been reading, and how is it different . . .” Mr. Larson paused. “Who's got an idea? Ed? You must have an idea. Tell me a difference.”

Ed gulped. Glancing at Cara and Joey before he spoke, he said, “Size? Our paper—I mean
The Landry News
—like, it doesn't have as many words?”

“Size! Excellent, Ed. Size.” Mr. Larson wrote the word on the board. “Now someone else,” said Mr. Larson, “another difference . . . LeeAnn?”

LeeAnn was ready. “Those other newspapers have hundreds of reporters and printers and stuff,” she blurted out, “and this newspaper has only a few.”

That broke things open. In just a few minutes, there was a long list of differences—things like advertisements, a purchase price, color pictures, comics, gossip
columns, advice columns, world news.

Then came the list of similarities. It covered all the basics:
The Landry News
had local news stories, it had reporters, it had writers, it had a black-and-white picture, it had an editorial, it had readers, and it was interesting, just like the other papers.