My Life as a Journalist: Part 3 — Fun with Furries
Here are some more favorite memories from working at The Battalion:
A page I designed for the Aggielife section of "The Battalion" during my time as an editor.
Courting Controversy
If there was one thing I enjoyed about being an editor, it was the ability to cause a stir.
Upon taking the job as the features editor, I read the last three years’ archives of Aggielife stories. Scanning the articles, I noticed the same stale topics were being covered semester after semester. Even I was guilty of resorting to a few tired chestnuts during my time.
I never shied away from controversy, though. During my time at the paper, I developed an unofficial weekly segment I called “Deviant of the Week.” Every week I would try to spotlight a new alternative lifestyle I felt would make students uncomfortable. I realize that my motives may not have been soaked in journalistic integrity — but boy was it fun.
My first fur-ay into this experiment was a story I assigned about furries, those wacky kids with a fetish for anthropomorphic animals. I did not have the time (nor inclination) to write the actual story myself so I entrusted it in the care of one of the paper’s best and brightest writers. Upon publication, we received hate letters from both the students disgusted with the story’s glorification of man-animal on man-animal sex and the furries disgusted with the story’s gross inaccuracies about their sub-culture.
Yiff, indeed.
Undeterred by the article’s response, I went on to publish additional stories about wiccans, atheists and other assorted wacky student groups.
My favorite response I received came from a student angered by the paper’s decision to publish an article on preteen cross dressers.
“I’ll never read The Batt again,” the reader wrote in an e-mail. “From now on, I’m only subscribing to the Houston Chronicle.”
I sure hope the reader enjoyed the Chronicle’s features section that day — which published the same AP story about transgendered youth I did.
Press-kit Piñatas
Working on the paper’s entertainment section, I received daily shipments of film press kits. Occasionally, these kits would come in cool decorative packages such as a kit for “Monster House” shaped like a haunted house, a kit for “Sponge Bob Square Pants” that contained Twinkies, or a kit for “Strangers with Candy: The Movie” that contained a box set of the TV show. Most of the time, though, the kits came in DVD cases and contained nothing but CD-ROMS full of photos of whatever movie the studio wanted us to pimp that week. Not one to throw stuff away, I saved the press kits in a desk drawer. Eventually, though, I saved so many kits that I ran out of room.
My solution? I bought a piñata and stuffed it with the press kits. I then invited my writers to come in for a meeting and, afterwards, have a swing at the piñata.
Upon busting a hole in the piñata and seeing what appeared to be DVDs of the latest films fall out, the writers exploded into a tangled mess of grabbing arms and kicking feet. They fell over themselves trying to grab as many of the “DVDs” as they could, unable to believe their luck. Once the commotion settled down and my writers realized that they weren’t holding free copies of their favorite movies but had fought over glorified photo CDs, they walked away grumbling. I thought it was good fun but my writers weren’t laughing with me. Maybe that’s why I had such a hard time afterwards convincing them to meet their deadlines.
To be continued…
