DISCLAIMER: The following article is an April Fools’ Day article. Though it may relate to real people or events, it is not factual.
Tyranny reigns over the campus news organizations.
Photo Credit: Daniel Falkenheim
At a conference conducted by the School of Communication and Media on Friday, March 28, it was announced that all forms of campus news would unite as a singular entity, which took effect the following Monday.
It was the last statement the School of Communication and Media would ever make, as the entity it created absorbed it soon afterward.
The new publication is entitled New Montclair News, and has absorbed the following on-campus publications: Red Hawk News; The Montclarion; WMSC; Wired Jersey; Montclair State Athletics; parody news website The RedHawkion; Tokyo News News, The Montclarion’s otaku-run rival; Planet Red Hawk; Commuters United, a weekly publication dedicated mostly to parking complaints and Rocky’s Monthly Garden Tips.
The sheer gravity of New Montclair News drew several off-campus publications into it as well, such as The Montclair Dispatch and The Odyssey. Due to a computer mix-up, Michigan State University’s The State News and Moscow State University’s newspaper have joined the news conglomerate as well.
“I have gone mad with power,” said Supreme Empress of New Montclair News and senior English and Classics major Kristen Bryfogle. “I haven’t slept since the merger, and I now have a salary six times larger than that of a full-time professor here.”
The publication releases print news on a daily basis, and tweets are being released on an hourly basis. During the one hour of downtime that has occurred in terms of newsworthy events on-campus, a tweet was released covering Montclair State’s “Top Eight Geese-watching Spots,” which was unfortunately cut short by Twitter’s character limit.
In addition to print news, New Montclair News releases video news and daily podcasts. “Thanks to Sony’s partnership with Montclair State, we now have top-of-the-line audio and video equipment,” said soon-to-be Co-Supreme Empress and current Overseer Jayna Gugliucci, a junior television and digital media major. “We release both videos and podcasts through SHOUTcast.”
The New Montclair News office has displaced the School of Communication and Media, the students of which now receive major credits for publishing and editing stories. “Thanks to employing dozens of copy editors, we don’t make any mistakes,” said Bryfogle. “No more will there be placeholder headlines and accidentally saying ‘next week’ for events that happened in the past week.”
Political Mastermind and Assistant Sports Editor Daniel Falkenheim, a junior journalism major, reflected positively on the new change. “Thanks to the big merger, I’m now pretty much a household name,” said Falkenheim. “Several major newspapers have called me up with offers as a political reporter, and President Obama even sent me a text saying ‘You the man, Dan. We should totally hang out sometime.’”
Professors who worked within the School of Communication and Media now serve as faculty advisers and legal and professional consultants for the new newspaper. “It’s basically glorified babysitting,” said Tara George, a former journalism professor who now serves the New Montclair News. “I can’t entirely complain, since I have more benefits now.”
The next goal for the news giant is to absorb the rest of New Jersey’s campus newspapers. “We tried to take control of New Jersey Media Group and all of their publications, but they refused to assimilate,” said Bryfogle. “It was completely bootycheeks.”
