The Last Reporter (4 page)

So that was the plan — the Ameche brothers to the rescue. The
Slash
staff was juiced. To them, it seemed like free money from heaven. And the Ameche brothers even promised to create a website that would have all the articles from each issue, along with the staff’s e-mail addresses so readers could get hold of reporters, plus regular updates of the news.

The Ameches would raise the money by selling ads. And those ads would appear in both the paper and web version of the
Slash.
“Advertisers like that,” said Adam. “It’s called double platforming.”

“It’s called what?” said Jennifer.

“Double platforming,” said Adam. “We put their ads in two different places, which gives them more bang for the buck. Plus, the Ameche brothers are a built-in four-legged call.”

“Four-legged what?” asked Jennifer.

“You know, two salesman making a house call.”

“Why are you talking like that?” said Jennifer.

“Just basic ad lingo,” said Adam. “I picked it up from the Ameche brothers. Don’t worry — you’ll catch on.”

“I hope not,” said Jennifer. “Ideally they’d sell ten hundred-dollar ads. But if they have trouble with that, they might sell smaller ads for maybe twenty-five dollars. And we’ll pay the Ameches for selling the ads, depending on how many they sell.”

“They could sell ten ads for one hundred dollars,” said Shadow. “Or they could sell forty ads for twenty-five dollars.”

“That’s right, Shadow,” said Jennifer. “And it doesn’t have to be just businesses. It could be parents who’d buy ads, like they do for the Harris yearbook —”

“Or they can sell one ad for one thousand dollars,” said Shadow. “Or they can sell twenty ads for twenty-five dollars, and five ads for one hundred dollars . . .”

“That’s the idea,” said Jennifer.

“Or they could sell one ad for two hundred and fifty dollars and one for one hundred dollars and twenty-six for twenty-five dollars,” said Shadow. “Or they could sell one ad for five hundred dollars . . .”

“We get it,” said Phoebe. “Duh. We’re not some kind of idiots, you know. They could sell one ad for nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents and one for one cent.”

“They could?” said Shadow. “Can you sell one ad for one cent? Or are you some kind of idiot?”

“Enough,” said Jennifer. “Stop. You two have to learn to get along. Being on our own is not going to be easy. We need everyone pulling together if we’re going to keep the
Slash
alive.”

“The Ameche brothers will figure it out; that’s their job,” said Jennifer. “And Adam and I will be working with them. Now I’ve done a little research. I Googled
journalism ethics
and got 59.2 million hits. There’s a lot to it. We have to be careful. There has to be a wall between the news side and our business side. It’s not your job to raise money. It’s your job to get the news, and we can’t mix up the two. You guys can’t be asking people you’re interviewing to give us money for ads. Like that story Adam and I did last month, on Reverend Shorty and the people in the Willows being forced to move away. We can’t be going to Reverend Shorty and asking his church to give money for an ad in the
Slash.
That would be like he was paying to get his story in. That would be like we only tell the stories of people who pay us. No one would trust us if they felt they could buy a story in the
Slash.
If anyone talks to you about wanting to buy an ad, you get in touch with me or Adam and we’ll hook them up with the Ameche brothers. OK?”

“Even parents?” asked a boy.

“Even parents,” said Adam. “Like Jennifer’s mom is great, but she’s this big PTA honcho. We’ve got to be careful that she doesn’t start asking us to do nice stories about the PTA just because we ask the PTA for money.”

“My mom wouldn’t do that,” said Jennifer.

“It was just an example,” said Adam. “I was just trying to make the point —”

“It wasn’t a very good example,” said Jennifer.

“Anyway,” said Adam, “you get the idea. Like Jennifer said — and Jennifer is the one who’s done all the research on this — I mean, 59.2 million hits. We’ve got to keep a wall between the news side and the business side. Jennifer showed me. All the ethics websites say it.”

“We’re going to build a wall?” said Shadow. “Bricks make really good walls. Very strong. You can huff and puff, but you can’t blow them down. Is the acting principal going to let us build a brick wall in 306?”

“You
are
some kind of idiot,” said Phoebe. “It’s a symbolic wall. It’s not made out of bricks. It’s made out of ideas, symbolically speaking.”

“A wall is not made of ideas,” said Shadow. “Stories are made of ideas. Call 911, Jennifer.”

“Stop,” said Jennifer. “You two — I feel like your mom. Please. You have no idea how hard this will be doing this on our own.”

“Let’s please stay calm,” said Adam. “The Ameche brothers won’t be working out of 306, anyway. Their headquarters is in the West End. That should help us keep things nice and separate.”

“Ameche brothers . . .” said Phoebe. “Ameche brothers . . . That name is familiar. Any relation to the
Ameche Brothers’ Talk Till You Drop All-Live Except the Recorded Parts
webcast?”

Adam nodded.

“That’s a great show,” said Phoebe.

They needed story ideas. Jennifer told them she really hoped they’d have an issue ready to go to press by the end of school. “That’s only seven weeks,” she said. “And of course, it will depend on how the Ameche brothers do, if they can raise the money. But we want to show these people who shut us down. The Bolands. Dr. Bleepin. All the assistants and associates and deputy superintendents who wouldn’t stand up for us. The school board. We are still here. We will not go away. We will print the truth!”

The coeditors had been so focused on figuring out how to pay for the
Slash,
they hadn’t been working much on story ideas. “Well, come on,” said Jennifer. “What are kids talking about? What’s the big news?”

“You’re not going to like this,” said Sammy, the
Slash
’s undercover food critic. “I know how much everybody hates those state tests. But every class, that’s all anyone’s talking about this week. The scores are out, and we did great.”

Phoebe said that in her before school/after school mandatory/voluntary prep class for the state tests, they were having an old-fashioned ice-cream social to celebrate the third-grade scores. “We’re going to wear real plastic straw hats,” she said.

“You know, I wasn’t thinking about it,” said Jennifer. “But we had a pizza party in English class to celebrate. And my mom, she said that the PTA was planning something for the school — she said Harris never had such a jump in scores.”

“Sounds like a story,” said Adam. “I’ll do it.” Adam wanted to do some good news. The truth was, he was worn out investigating everything and everybody. The science fair. Devillio. The Willows. The
Slash
being shut down. Finally, a happy, easy story. “We’ll talk about how much the scores went up in each grade,” he said. “We’ll get all the results. Sammy, we’ll need your help on graphics — like you did for your mashed-potato investigation. We’ll have bar graphs and pie charts and ice-cream cakes that show the numbers going up.”

“And we should write about teachers, too,” said Phoebe. “The teachers must be way better, since the scores went up. And we should write about how much harder everyone worked than ever before. How great before school/after school mandatory/voluntary was. And how everyone’s getting smarter. I hope everybody knows what this means: We are the smartest kids in the history of this school.”

They got quiet. Kids looked around at each other. Them? The smartest ever? Many were thinking of older brothers and sisters and how smart
they
were. Adam was thinking of this older boy, Franky Cutty, who was at the high school now and was the most impressive big kid he’d ever met.

Smarter than that?

“We’re number one,” chanted Phoebe. “We’re number one.”

“I guess it’s possible,” Adam said softly.

Sammy said his undercover food critic column was going to rate chocolate milk at restaurants around Tremble. Several staffers thought that was a bad idea — there wasn’t enough to it. Someone suggested that he might do chocolate milk and hot chocolate and chocolate milk shakes combined, since they’re part of the same family of liquids, but Sammy was quite adamant that there was more than enough to fill a column on chocolate milk alone.

“I used to think the same thing,” he said. “But then, I don’t know, maybe a month ago, I ordered a chocolate milk at the West River Diner. It was a real letdown. The chocolate syrup was thick on the bottom and had not been properly stirred in. There was no bubbly chocolate foam on top. The glass had been completely filled, meaning you couldn’t put a straw in and blow bubbles without spilling on the table.

“They didn’t even give me a straw. I had to ask twice. I know it’s hard to believe, but I swear I’m not making it up. And that wasn’t the worst. I tasted it. . . .” Here Sammy paused.

“What?” said a photographer. “What?”

“Warm.”

A few shuddered. “Warm milk?” said a typist. “Gross.”

“Room temperature,” said Sammy.

It made Adam so uncomfortable that he pulled out his jawbreaker and gave it a couple of quick sucks.

“You know,” said Sammy, “this isn’t just some big joke: rate the chocolate milks — which one gets 4 yummy-yummies? Oh, big deal, rah-rah. This story is a service to every kid in this community. We need to define the standards for chocolate milk here in Tremble. Draw the line. Who will do it if we don’t? There’s a lot of backsliding, precisely because too many people say it’s only chocolate milk. We’ve got to stop that kind of thinking. Every part of the meal — I don’t care if it’s the mashed potatoes or the bacon on the bacon-egg-and-cheese or the chocolate milk — it should be a little masterpiece. This stuff matters!”

They were quiet. He’d gotten to them. It was the most they’d ever heard Sammy talk at once. They knew that he liked food, but until now, they’d never realized how deep it went. That was the wonderful thing about a newspaper. This was why they had to save the
Slash.
People had these passions you didn’t even know about, and the
Slash
gave them a chance to express them.

“Fantastic, Sammy,” said Adam. “I’m convinced.”

“Me, too,” said Jennifer. “Plus, it’s spring. Weather’s getting warm. Hot chocolate’s not on readers’ minds. They’re thinking of nice cold, foamy chocolate milk. They’re thinking of taking a big icy swallow, then putting their straw in and making bubbles so the glass still looks filled to the top. And the
Slash
’s undercover food critic will tell them where it’s done right.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Sammy.

Jennifer reminded them that they’d need a story on the Bolands and the school board shutting down the
Slash.

Then Phoebe raised her hand. She announced that she had the greatest idea ever, which did not surprise Adam. The fact was, it was true; Phoebe did these amazing stories. Her profile of Eddie the janitor had led them to the $75,000 in stolen money; her feature on the dental society’s smile contest exposed phony grown-ups; her articles on a new state policy had saved the climbing tree.

Phoebe was definitely legendary, but it was exhausting working with the world’s greatest third-grade reporter. Even when the stories were well written. Adam and Jennifer had to hold her little third-grade hand every step of the way — symbolically speaking, as Phoebe would say. “Yes, Phoebe, you did a good job.” “Yes, Phoebe, it was the best story in the history of the world.” “Yes, Phoebe, the entire planet loves you.”

“What’s the idea?” said Adam, bracing himself.

“I want to do an advice column,” she said. “We’ll call it ‘Ask Phoebe.’”

An advice column? thought Adam. “An advice column?” said Adam. “You’re in third grade! What do you know? You’re not big enough to give advice.”

“Well, I used to think that, too,” said Phoebe. “But then I was working on my memoir —”

“Memoir!” said Adam. “Memoir! A memoir is a story of your life written when you’re old and famous and have done a lot of important stuff. Like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or Mother Teresa. You can’t write a memoir. You’re in third grade.”

“No, no, no,” said Phoebe. “You’re thinking of the
old
meaning of memoir. The new meaning has much more democracy in it. Anyone can write a memoir under the new rules, even if they’ve never done anything. And it doesn’t even have to be totally true, as long as it seems like it
could
be true. My teacher had us write a memoir of our lives up until now. So I’m just going to keep going and make it into a book.”

“Well, that makes sense,” said Jennifer. “So you’re just starting, like, a diary, and when you get grown-up and have done a bunch of important stuff, you’ll finish it.”

“Oh, no,” said Phoebe. “I think it’ll be done by fourth grade at the latest. I already have more than a hundred pages.”

Adam didn’t know if he had the energy to stand in front of this onrushing locomotive named Ask Phoebe and absorb the crash. Advice from Phoebe? Who could possibly be less qualified? Was there anyone on this earth who had less perspective than Phoebe? What did Phoebe know about the pressures of being in middle school? What did Phoebe know about sports? What did Phoebe know about boy/girl stuff? What did Phoebe know about the ins and outs, the ups and downs, of life itself?

What did Phoebe know, period?

Nothing!

But if there was one thing Adam had learned from being Phoebe’s coeditor for nearly a year, it was that you don’t try to fight Phoebe on the big principles. Get her on the small stuff.

“Tell me this, Ask Phoebe. How are you going to get people to send you questions?” Adam paused. He was pretty sure he had her. “We don’t have a website yet, and probably won’t until the next issue of the
Slash
comes out. We can’t have you writing a column just for your little third-grade friends. Remember, we’re the
Slash,
the newspaper of Harris Elementary SLASH”— and here Adam made a
slash
sign in the air for emphasis —“Middle School. How is anyone else going to know about Ask Phoebe? How will they find you?”