The Only Newspaper We Will Ever Need

Evidently the ABQ City Council meeting was so boring last night it busted the ABQJournal website. Okay, maybe that is specious reasoning. But it was really darn boring. The whole Council looked and sounded (at least what I watched before I almost fell asleep myself from ennui) like it just wanted to go home and take a nap. They couldn't even get riled up about a fight over public art.

And having busted the ABQJournal website is a shame, too, as I was planning on directing you, fine reader, to some horribly misspelled and generally crappy student letters to the editor sent by kids at my school. It's a long story as to how the letters got there, but the upshot is that 6th graders at Jefferson Middle School need better spell, grammar and compositional checkers on their Microsoft Word. The letters read like a bad Huck Finn impersonation rambling unfixedly about standardized testin' and remediatin'.

For reasons not entirely clear, the (now officially called) "only newspaper you will ever need" seems to have a large daily news conduit running between Jefferson MS and the said newspaper. Hardly a day goes by that someone from my school isn't quoted about educational issue this or horrible idea that.

All of which would be fine if we at Jefferson MS really had anything interesting to say. Trust me, we don't. Hell, look at this blog and you got all the proof you need on that score. If you want further confirmation, feel free to attend a staff meeting at JMS. No, I take that back...I wouldn't wish attendance at a JMS staff meeting on anybody. Lethal injection might be a preferable sentence to attendance at a JMS staff meeting. Forget I mentioned it.

Meanwhile, it became official yesterday that the Trib's last edition will be this Saturday, leaving us with the "only newspaper you will ever need (ONYWEN)". Yes, this makes me sad. No, it doesn't make me as sad as a genocide or students shooting other students or global warming.

And no it doesn't make me sad because my pathetic little rants will no longer be published. I'll miss the beer money generated from those piddly missives, but the world hardly needs someone else telling us how incompetent George W. Bush has been. No, I think it's sad because we already have too few places to rely upon to learn about our world and community, and now another one is gone.

I also think it's sad because the "only newspaper you will ever need (ONYWEN)" is far, far, far, far, really FAR from the only newspaper we really need. I'm not one of those who feels the Journal is part of a world-wide conspiracy or that it is categorically awful. It has, in my humble opinion, elements of quality. There just aren't enough of them, and not nearly enough of them to be the "only newspaper you will ever need".

Au revoir, Tribune.

P.S.: It's supposed to appear more heartfelt when you say "goodbye" in a foreign language. In that case, I'll add "auf wiedersehen" and "sayonora". Not to mention that "aloha" also means goodbye.