Week seven--and the blogs are still coming

So, school is technically over for me. I mean, graduation isn't until May, and until the webmaster puts up my new stuff on the journal website (from two weeks ago) I may not feel done. But, it's basically over.

It's a weird feeling. But, I actually felt like a working journalist today when I got an unhappy phone call.

You see, a local school had a health day, and distributed pamphlets to the students about sex. It explained sexual acts pretty explicitly, and at least one parent was unhappy that her 8th grader received this without her permission. So, she wrote us a letter about it and cited some descriptions of sexual acts in detail.

After some talking around the office, we decided not to print the descriptions. We have a lot of older and very religious readers who were going to be offended by the letter anyway. We decided it would be best not to cause any further upset, and replaced the section saying the pamphlets contained graphic descriptions.

Today, the author of the letter called. She was not impressed that we didn't want to print it, saying the point was that she didn't want to read it, or have her daughter read it. I heard her out, and explained that all letters to the editor are subject to editing, and we didn't feel comfortable printing one section of the letter, so either had to omit that part, or omit the whole letter. I then encouraged her to write another letter, if she felt strongly about the omission, explaining how upset she was that The Journal didn't want to present that information to its readers but her daughter was given it at school.

She seemed much calmer when she said goodbye, so now I'm just waiting to see if I get the letter.

I feel like I handled it pretty well, even though my stomach is still is knots every time I have to deal with unhappiness.

Speaking of unhappiness, Guysborough Council last night was wild. Everyone talks about how crazy Canso Council can get, but it really had nothing on last night! The Save Lincolnville Campaign showed up at council and issued its demands for changes in representation, and council adjourned before it was finished. I'm still working on the story for next week's Journal, but it's definitely going to be a hard one. It's a very emotional issue, and I don't think last night went particularly well for either side. Nothing was resolved either, so this may be opening a can of worms with allegations of racism becoming quite prevalent.