The mainstream media are saturating their airwaves, broadsheets and bandwidth with the nation's economic and political dramas, but at least one Providence newsroom has managed to steer clear of such stories by playing to its demographic.
This audacious publication is far from conventional, with students filling the pages of the Saint Patrick Tuesday Journal with op-eds on the nutritional value of candy and detailed analyses of recently instituted gum-chewing bans - all in time for dinner.
Organized as a collaborative after-school program between Brown students and Saint Patrick's School in downtown Providence, the Tuesday Journal provides a creative outlet for the budding columnists, journalists and cartoonists who assemble every Tuesday to work on an issue of their paper.
True to the name of their publication, eight Saint Patrick's students and six Brown students congregated at 3 p.m. Tuesday for the semester's first meeting, in a classroom on the second floor of the Smith Street Catholic school. Sporting sharp green sweaters and white collared shirts and ranging from fifth to seventh graders, the aspiring journalists spent an hour and a half tossing back and forth ideas and jokes with the volunteers from Brown.
"You can write stories about pretty much whatever you want," Lindsay Southworth '09, the project's leader, said to the students after she and the other volunteers introduced themselves. The content did, however, have to submit to a "G" or "PG" rating, she said.
"You can write about chicken pot pie," seventh-grader Dimitri Astby added from the back of the room. "Teacher of the week. Your favorite ice cream."
Distributed to the fifth through eighth grades and with a print run of 100 copies per issue, the Tuesday Journal was started by Joanna Joly '07 in the spring of 2006. Nostalgic for her days as editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper, the architectural studies concentrator spearheaded the program with fellow former editor-in-chief Kate Johnston '07. Though it originated as one of the University's Catholic community outreach programs - and began as the Wednesday Journal - the sustainability of the program was far more important to Joly than its initially Catholic roots, she said.
"It doesn't need to be an exclusively Catholic thing," Joly said.
Shortly before her graduation, Joly handed the program's reins to Southworth and Julie Siwicki '10, who joined in the spring of 2007 after hearing about it from a table slip. Joly had been having some difficulty finding successors - and even participants - before the two showed up.
Funded by Professor of Medicine Timothy Flanigan, who writes a check out to the program for $120 a year, the St. Patrick's Tuesday Journal is not a newspaper in the traditional sense. Past issues have included Halloween-themed quizzes, comics and poetry.
"Some kids take the journalism aspect more seriously," Southworth said. Still, she said, "it's their paper. It's not our paper."
There is, however, a limit to what the students can include.
"Remember what Lindsay said?" Siwicki said to Astby as she looked over his pencil-drawn series of comics titled "Halo Minisodes," based on the popular video game. Stick figures shoot at one another and use words such as "poop."
"It's PG!" Astby protested.
"But there's shooting."
"I could put in a lesson in conflict," Astby, who has contributed to the paper since fifth grade, said excitedly. "Like 'Don't settle with guns, just use fun!' Something like that. ... Instead of using guns, we can use water guns."
When Siwicki noted that parents have complained in the past about references to Halo, Astby said in sing-song, "I can call it Halo backwards - OLAH."
Students sign up for the Tuesday Journal for a number of reasons and the class is mostly divided between students who want to see their comics published and those who want an outlet for their writing.
"It's fun and you'll gain a lot from it," fifth-grader Fatima Lawal said. She likes to write stories and poetry and has already begun working on a piece about one of her teachers.
Even those who aren't particularly excited about writing or drawing find something to do. One student wanted to create a Sudoku. But Astby said, "I joined 'cause I don't wanna stay home," to the laughter of his classmates.
The volunteers from Brown agreed that they find themselves returning week after week to St. Patrick's, despite - or even because of - the frequent "antics" of the students.
"I do it for the kids, pretty much," said Southworth, who described them as "great" and "crazy."
"There's something to be said for getting off the hill" and getting to know members of the community downtown, Siwicki added.
"It's cliched, but I really, really loved the kids," Joly said. "That age group is an especially unique group. They're so fragile, yet so passionate. ... They're so excited about being published."
But their time at the school hasn't been without its bumps.
"The biggest challenge was probably getting the children that like to misbehave - quote unquote - to produce something that they could be proud of," Joly said. "I didn't want anybody to slip through the cracks."
But despite their best efforts to keep their students, some of the kids have left for other pursuits.
"We lost a lot of kids when basketball season started up," Southworth said.
