You’re gonna want to read this essay from Alex before tonight’s episode. Thou doth protest too much?

For the people who watched the first episode of The Paper and assume that all we do is bad mouth each other and fight, you are greatly mistaken. The Paper is a 30-minute show (22 if you don’t include commercials), so pretty much one episode of the show is equivalent to one lunch period at school — and we were filmed for over 8 months. Don’t jump to conclusions and assume we don’t report on the news and put out a great publication despite the bickering. We report on important issues ranging from immigration to war, and we put out a 30+ page newspaper every month (for anyone who works for their newspaper they can attest to how impressive that is).

As for awards, we have quite a few. We are an All-Florida award-winning publication at the Florida Scholastic Press Association for three years now and we have a number of individual awards to go with it. For instance, Dan and Cassia have both won two All-Florida awards for columns and reviews respectively. Adam and Amanda have each won an All-Florida award (Sports News and Feature writing). Trevor has won a number of layout and design awards and Giana came in first place at the district on the spot 4-person newspaper team competition. As for myself, I am Florida’s High School Journalist of the Year, probably the biggest journalism honor in the state. I have also personally won an All-Florida award for Sports News and Sports Features, as well as being on the first place team with Giana at districts and on another first place award-winning team just the other day at the state convention.

So for anyone who doesn’t think we were all qualified to be Editor-in-Chief, think again, because we all have the awards to prove it. I’m not trying to be cocky (although the latest Paper trailer shows that I have a history of it). I’m just trying to prove that there’s more to the Circuit than meets the eye (sorry, I had to drop the cheesy Transformers line). We really do put our hearts and souls into our newspaper and just because we fight and talk bad about each other doesn’t mean we don’t put our differences aside in the classroom to publish an amazing newspaper. Just watch the show to find out for yourself.