Crush Lists and the Media Drama

This was never a story to begin with. There was no real substance. A group of graduating students decide to post lists of people they had crushes on in the past four years and found attractive. Even as a former reporter for my paper, I wouldn't have written a story about this. Where's the point? It seems quite obvious that the Post was fishing for a story to entertain its readers. "There's no story here," we told them. "You'd be surprised," the reporter told us. There are other things you can spend your time writing about. You don't need to waste your time writing about a group of teens' harmless shenanigans. This is New York City. There are stories out there that are worthy of being heard and are much more interesting than ours. Take some time to look for them.

Crush lists were never about lewd intentions. They are just a way to celebrate the end of our high school career. It's a fun way to say goodbye to friends and shake off any lingering confessions before we head off to college. This was never a big deal until papers blew it out of proportion. It was never about sex until reporters implied that it was without having seen the lists or understanding the purpose of the tradition. They made assumptions off an online page and then went to find interviews that reinforced their opinion.

There's a reason our school imposed ID card scanners. It's because unwanted reporters were entering our building and snooping around for needless stories (see cuddle puddle). We have our own paper to report on school issues and seeing outside papers conduct themselves in such a terrible journalistic manner (I would've thought papers know what stories are and aren't newsworthy) gives off a bad impression on students here and budding journalists like myself.

The media seems to enjoy treating us like celebrities. They seem to enjoy reinforcing the nerd stereotype and then finding ways to contradict it. Sure, it makes for an interesting story that the layman will surely enjoy reading, but what good is it? At the end of the day, all they're really doing is hurting an entire student body and perpetuating stereotypes that are largely false. Teens will be teens. If they find a crush list story worthy of reporting, they might as well stick investigative reporters in middle schools and have them write a feature story about the notes kids love passing around during class. Seriously people, give us a break.