The first time I was in a newspaper was the summer I was seven years old. My friend and I were at the park. We were the only ones there that day. The local paper was doing a story on how hot it had been that summer. A reporter took our picture and asked us questions about our summer activities. Later that week our images were committed to ink. I was so excited to see myself in the newspaper. I thought everyone would for sure see it and that somehow made me important. Like a local celebrity.
Of course that was not the case. The paper in my hometown is a small one. It has little in it that could be considered actual news. Most of its pages are filled with average human interest stories or ads for local businesses. I can't count how many times I've been in my hometown paper since then. At least a couple dozen times for this and that. My mother has kept each and every issue in which I mentioned or pictured.
In high school, I wrote for my school's paper. Most of the pieces for that were quite trivial and boring. They were very routine and took little effort to write. Once, a student reporter wrote an article criticizing the student body about its disrespectful attitude towards the teachers and staff at school. That caused quite the scandal and was a topic of hot debate for weeks at our little school. That is the only time I ever experienced first hand the impact a newspaper article can have.
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