What makes a good newspaper, good articles or good readers? The Staff of the Yacare has been trying so hard to come up with a paper that can be considered  excellent and yet we are afraid we might have failed our goal. What we are aiming for in the Yacare, is a balance between funny articles and more serious articles. We understand that the students love reading about gossip and jokes (who doesn't?) but we also wanted students to read interesting articles that also had depth and meaning to it.

      In the first issue, after weeks of hard work and a lot of writing and proof-reading articles from the staff, we found that we had a Yacare filled with interesting articles about issues that mattered to students. But as you can imagine, most students flipped through the Yacare, found the Frases Celebres and the Identikit read those and then merely tossed the Yacare aside. We were also frustrated with the response from the articles on the Ycua Bolanos. Even though the tragedy affected a lot of people at school and many were involved in helping out, the articles published about it were mostly disregarded. It is understandable that on a Friday afternoon, no one wants to read long articles, but it still leaves us with a question. Is it the Yacare Staff’s fault that the students don't read the paper or is it the student’s lack of interest? Is a paper’s success measured by the quality of the articles or by the number of readers?

      This means that either the paper must change to fit the readers, or that readers must somehow adapt themselves to the new Yacare. This dilemma has troubled us because if we remove all serious articles and leave only those that are funny, then we have a Yacare that does not reach the ultimate potential that the writers are capable of and it leaves us with a less than mediocre paper. We are trying our hardest to present to the school a newspaper that meets the standards of ASA and that the students will find enjoyable. But we are not about to produce a paper that lacks quality.

      If most students had taken the time to read the first issue of the Yacare, they would have realized that there were several very interesting articles that many students probably didn't bother to read. For example, Noelle Thorley’s article on the firefighters really gave the reader an insight on what it feels like to risk your life everyday for a living. Also the article by Irene Solaz about how people helped in the tragedy of the Ycuá Bolaños fire captured the solidarity of those who helped. Steven Dibble’s article on safety measure had many facts that I’m sure most didn't know prior to reading. And these are just some of the articles that can be found in the Yacare.

      So what conclusion am I trying to get at? That if instead of just reading the gossip or the inside jokes, students took the time to read the articles, they would find that there are a lot of excellent writing in the Yacare. If students want a newspaper filled with pointless jokes and lacking in quality writing, they must look somewhere else. The Yacare will continue to work to improve its articles and to produce a paper that we can proudly claim as ours, it’s up to reader to realize just how great the Yacare can be.

YACARE/editorial

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By Carolina d. H.