Since publishing our previous editorial detailing all the different ways to be a part of The Phoenix, we have been flooded by a deluge of article contributions. So hear us out: please stop writing for us! We have never had a problem with too many articles before, but now we are forced to publish larger issues — it is just too much work, and we don’t want to do it anymore. We spend all night editing these huge issues, we never finish them by the 5 a.m. printing deadline, and our publisher is mad at us. Things are getting out of hand. Please stop.
The overwhelming influx of new writers has caused many issues. The News writers are running out of things to report, having so thoroughly covered every inch of every relevant story that they simply cannot think of what to write about. They have resorted to reporting on passing cloud formations and providing updates on SEPTA train arrivals. They are starving, desperate for any newsworthy topic to report on. In their desperation, they loiter around Sci Commons all day, hoping to overhear a conversation juicy enough to make the front page.
The Opinions section is suffering a similar crisis. There are simply not enough interesting opinions to satiate the demand generated by our horde of voracious writers. We are sick of editing and publishing tepid takes. Just this last week, three people wrote articles arguing that Indian Bar is the best Sharples bar. Scientists predict that at the current unsustainable rate at which the masses of opinions writers are generating articles, they will completely exhaust our planet’s resources of opinions by 2025.
With so many eager writers banging on the door, Campus Journal’s typically once-a-fortnight publication schedule has become weekly. Too many people want to write stories about Swarthmore myths or places in the Ville. So many in fact, that some Campus Journal writers have been forced to write serious articles. Gone are the whimsical articles about Crumb Cafe French toast or squirrels and chipmunks in the Crum Woods. The limits of human creativity have been reached. Every possible permutation of fictional narrative has been exhausted, and now there is nothing else to write about. CJ writers have resorted to plagiarizing wattpad.com fanfics and passing them off as their own.
Arts is the worst. So many people want to write movie reviews that the waiting list is four issues long. People have started reviewing movies from the 80s. One person even tried to write a review of the 1895 film “Arrival of the Train.” So many people want to write artist of the week profiles that we have run out of artists to write about — every single artist on campus has been covered. In a desperate bid for more artists to profile, we have begun to write about students who are not traditionally considered “artists.” Editor-in-Chief Best Chantanapongvanij ’23 will be artist of the week next issue. “Editing is my art form,” said Chantanapongvanij.
Suffering from a similar excess of writers and dearth of content, Sports writers have been forced to seek out more bountiful pastures outside the now barren field of campus athletics. For lack of more interesting material, sports as boring as curling, polo, and golf are now mainstays of the section. In our quest for content, writers have even begun branching out to European sports, causing virulent disagreement in the editing room over whether to refer to soccer by its American name or its European name. (A certain English editor in particular is especially passionate about this contentious topic.)
Even though the publication faces a tsunami of articles in dire need of copy editing, we have so many new copy editors that there just are not enough articles to go around. Copy Editing has descended into chaos as all the editors copy edit the same articles at once. The Chief Copy Editor then has to individually send each editor certain articles so as to avoid fights breaking out. When the editors all inevitably read the same articles anyway, they race to see who can add commas the fastest, which means the Chief Copy Editor has to then go back through and dial down the edits.
Because there are too many writers and editors, layout now has to deal with too many people and too many words at once. Sleep is apparently important, and layout can’t get any if they have to work on the newspaper until 5 a.m.
So again, if you want to write for The Phoenix, definitely DON’T email The Phoenix at editor@swarthmorephoenix.com
[Disclaimer: This article is for April Fools; if you’d like to write for The Phoenix, we’d love to have you!]
