I got an e-mail with this subject line a couple of weeks ago.

It was from a teacher at Phalen Lake Hmong Studies and Core Magnet School in St. Paul. Her students were starting a school newspaper and she wanted to know if I could come in so they could interview a real, live newspaper reporter.

Well, of course.

In these dark days of newspaper journalism, somebody was actually interested in what we do. Wow.

I showed up Tuesday morning. Seven kids, from Grades 2 to 6, sat around the table.

They had doughnuts on the table and cards with prepared questions in their hands.

They launched in. 

Some questions were predictable: “How old are you?” “How old were you when you started writing for the Star Tribune newspaper?” “How old were you when you started being a reporter?”

There were the huge questions: “What do you write in a newspaper?” (I told them we have an army of editors debating this in endless meetings all day.) The practical ones: “If somebody writes something for you to put in the newspaper, do you have to type the whole thing?”

Then the teacher asked me something I should have anticipated and prepared for. But didn’t.

“If you had one piece of advice for them on putting out a newspaper, what would it be?”

I was momentarily stumped.

I rambled on about the value of community and how newspapers bring people together, blah, blah, blah. Because, it’s you know, important. One or two kids yawned and others looked away, bored.

It was only after I got in my car, that I realized that the right answer was, of course:”Have fun.” Because it is fun. That’s why I’m still here after 14 years.

Just after 5 that evening, I got a phone call (I had left my business cards behind).

It was R., a 6th grader who’d asked some of the most pointed questions.

“Are you writing a newspaper?” she breathed.

“Uhm, no, I’m not writing today,” I replied.

“You are much funner than the other teachers,” R. pronounced. “You are good as a newspaper reporter and you are good as a teacher. You have lots of opportunities.”

I’m not sure if she knew what those words meant to me, on a day when our newsroom felt especially gloomy, with the death of the short-lived Marq magazine.

Thank you, kids.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 9:50 am and is filed under Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.