The True Revolutionist Newspaper

.The True Revolutionist Newspaper.

A year in Review (The entire story)

The True Revolutionist has been alive for an entire year now. I'm still remembering the day one of our school newspaper issues was released. The teachers in charge of it had left out several stories, left out the names of people who wrote other articles, and changed words. With the thought that I could do better I told Abby at lunch that we were going to make our own newspaper, but we felt we needed someone to sponcer us. During activity period that same day Abby and I decided to talk to our english teacher about it. However, his attitude was negative, and his answer was that he wanted nothing to do with it.

Even more pissed than I orginally was, I figured we did not need his help and could do it on our own. We did not need the school's help, we did not need to listen to what anyone else was saying, and we were too good to be writing for a school newspaper who's articles included "East Juniors Hottest Couples" (that was an actual article by the way.) The East Side News was trash and had no content. After quite a few swear words ran through my mind towards certain teachers, I told Liz our plan.

At first, we weren't exactly sure of what we were going to do, or if we were going to do anything besides drop out of the East Side News Staff. Liz seemed a bit hesitant about the whole idea but soon followed. We decided we could put it on the internet to save paper, after all- Abby is so evironmental we didn't want to kill any trees that didn't need killing. Then came the name of our newspaper, we HAD to have a name. Liz's first idea was "The Genuine Revolutionist". However, the word genuine makes me think of a 70 year old sailor drinking genuine wiskey. Her next guess was "The True Revolutionist". Abby, Liz, and I decided that it was good.

We e-mailed our fist issue of The True Revolutionist the first week of January 2003 to about 20 of our friends. We did not want to completely lose our issues after we sent them out so we decided we need a web site to put them. After using diaryland for three months, I decided this would be a good place to archieve our old issues. Liz decided to shorten us to Truerevo for our username and it stuck.

In early March we decided we needed help with our website. It wasn't going to well, and none of knew enough html yet to make it flashy and impressive. So Liz told me that Jordan, a boy who went to our school who she was friends with knew a bit of html and was willing to help. At the time I did not know Jordan, but we talked online about how to make the site better. In March 2003 we had our first meeting after school at Liz's house with all four of us. It was a success and our site was looking better. Soon after we released our second issue of the True Revolutionist.

As we moved through spring 2003 our subscribe list kept growing and growing. Not getting the word out to our friends, but also to people in other countries. By May we had four foreign subscribers that all kind of knew each other and lived in Scotland.

To say that we had subscribers in Scotland was impressive considering it meant we could say we had crossed an ocean- and in only five months. As summer came, our ambition began to slow down, but we kept going, just at a slower pace. Jordan's job as web designer was losing its importance as we all began learning more html. By July we had put out our fifth issue and thought of it as a milestone.

Time kept passing and suddenly we found ourselves togather for a year. January 2, 2004 our one year anniversary party was held at Liz's with about 20 of our closest subscribers. Liz even made everyone True Revo shirts to advertise for us with the website address on and a different slogan for everyone. I remember telling Liz and Abby at the party, "the only thing that would make this better is if our foreign subscribers could have made it".

It really doesn't seem like its been a year. Or that its now 60 some subscribers in three countries and several states.

And true, sometimes I think we all want to give up on the newspaper and quit, but through all this, what sence would that make?

Much Love, Cheryl Hatalla.