Hey there, Manhattan High. If you haven’t already figured it out, this week’s edition was made by 21st Century Journalism students as part of their final.

21st Century Journalism is the introductory course for Newspaper, Yearbook and Video production. After completing the class, students have the option to join any of the publication staffs or to continue on to the other half of the intro class, Digital Media Technology.

These kids have been learning the fundamentals of true journalism, photography and layout all semester and after a few short months of learning, they’re already making a newspaper.

For those of you that don’t make newspapers every Monday night, it’s hard work. My editors, as well as these intro kids, spend several hours after school producing the newspaper. Production requires stories to be written and revised; photographs to be taken, edited and captioned; graphics to be made and layout to be finished. At the end of the night, everything goes to The Mercury plant to print.

The process is long and hard, but it’s all for you. Our homework is for all of you to see. Week after week, we attend the events you perform at, we interview you and we take candid pictures of you for you and the rest of the school to see. We tell your stories, and we love doing it.

Journalism is the only reason why the public knows what’s going on around the world. Journalists keep the government, the education system and the rest of the world in check and it’s so important that people let journalists do their work without hassle. Therefore, it should be respected.

This newspaper is so important and it deserves so much more respect than you guys give us, especially The Mentor. We are entirely student-run and we’re doing real, professional work. The students on this staff are performing at a level that is equal to, if not surpasses the work done by other professionals in this town. And we do all of this while keeping up with six other classes.