The Landry News (10 page)

Cara had hold of Joey's arm, squeezing it, and her voice had gone up an octave. “So you've got a computer, right?” she asked. Joey nodded, and Cara went on. “And you've got a printer, too?”

Joey nodded again and said, “It's not as big as the one at school, but it's a good one, and it even prints in color! We'll have to redesign everything for a smaller sheet size, but that's okay, because it's a whole new paper anyway!”

Cara stayed on the bus and rode to Joey's stop. LeeAnn and Alan and Ed had joined the conversation, and in four minutes they had already taken a unanimous vote on the new name that Ed came up with. By the time they got off the bus and had begun to walk the last block to Joey's house, the publishing committee had offered Cara Landry the job of editor in chief for a brand new newspaper, the
Guardian.
And she accepted, provided that the motto of the new paper could still be the same: Truth and Mercy.

  *  *  *

Halfway through science class on Friday morning, Mrs. Cormier arrived with an invitation for Cara Landry. The principal wanted to talk to her.

A few minutes later, Cara sat across the desk from Dr. Barnes. She was glad she had experience in these matters. Cara had observed quite a few angry school administrators—at least one a week for most of fourth grade. She had developed what she called the Mad-O-Meter. It was a scale from one to ten, where one equals “mild tremor” and ten equals “erupting volcano.” Judging from the color of his face, the rate of his breathing, the flare of his nostrils, and the fact that both doors of his office were closed, Cara thought that Dr. Barnes was probably at about eight—the “steaming mud slide” stage. She waited politely for Dr. Barnes to begin the conversation.

He slid a copy of the
Guardian
across the desk and turned it around so she could see it. The headline of the lead story was W
HY THE
F
IRST
A
MENDMENT
I
S
F
IRST
. The article laid out the situation involving
The Landry News,
Mr. Larson, Denton Elementary School, and the Carlton school board. Dr. Barnes had to admit to himself that it was a masterful piece of reporting. The story was honest, it was impartial, and it lived up to the newspaper's motto.

Dr. Barnes cleared his throat and said, “What is your connection with this newspaper, Cara?”

Cara disliked being treated like a baby. The masthead of the newspaper was on the front page, as plain as the nose on Dr. Barnes's face—and his nose was very plain from where Cara was sitting. The masthead listed all the workers on the paper. All twenty-three kids in Mr. Larson's
afternoon class had wanted their names in the masthead, and each had done something to help get the
Guardian
pulled together in record time. Cara and Joey had gotten the idea on Monday afternoon, and the first edition had been ready to distribute today, Friday morning.

Dr. Barnes was a tempting target, but Cara didn't get snippy, and she didn't get angry. She didn't even get sarcastic. She pointed meekly at the masthead. “It says what everyone does for the paper right here in the masthead. I'm the editor in chief.”

Dr. Barnes said, “I see. And weren't you the editor in chief of
The Landry News
as well?”

Cara nodded. “Yes, until Mr. Larson told us we had to stop publishing it for a while.”

Cara already knew exactly where Dr. Barnes was headed with this. She did not want to suffer through a long and boring cat-and-mouse question session. Cara wanted to lay it all out on the table. And she also wanted Dr. Barnes to know right away that she saw what he was up to.

So before Dr. Barnes could ask his next question, Cara said, “You probably think that this paper is just
The Landry News,
only with a different name. But it's not, Dr. Barnes. First,
The Landry News
was written and assembled and produced during school hours on school property, using school equipment and supplies. The
Guardian
was written outside of school, and it was produced in a private home using privately owned equipment and supplies.

“Second,
The Landry News
was distributed to students by other students during school hours on school property. The
Guardian
is distributed by a group of kids to their friends on privately owned property before or after school hours.

“And third,
The Landry News
was supervised by Mr. Larson, and from the second edition to the ninth and final edition, Mr. Larson saw every copy of it. The
Guardian
was thought up and created independently by only the friends listed here in the masthead, without adults being involved at all.”

Cara hadn't meant to push Dr. Barnes up toward the “erupting volcano” point, but the lava was starting to flow anyway. He glared at her and jabbed at the paper with his blunt index finger. “Young lady, do you mean to tell me that you did not intend to distribute these papers at school today? These papers are all over this school and all over the floors in all the buses.”

Cara said mildly, “We didn't bring a single paper to school, honest. We have friends at almost every bus stop, and we had our newspapers ready this morning, so we handed them out. We even made sure that we stayed in someone's yard instead of on the sidewalk—because the sidewalk is owned by the town, and when kids are waiting for the school bus there, it's like school property. But after we handed the papers to our friends, where they took them—well, that wasn't up to us.”

Cara leaned forward and pointed at the little symbol Joey had added to the bottom of the front page. “We even reminded kids to be sure to recycle the paper.”

Cara sat up straighter in her chair and said, “Hey—I know! Next week, we'll add ‘Please don't litter,' and see if that helps.” Cara paused a minute, smiling absently at Dr. Barnes. Even his ear lobes were red now.

“And guess what?” said Cara brightly.

“What?” said Dr. Barnes, almost in a whisper.

“If you flip that paper over, down at the bottom you can see our Internet address—isn't that cool? By this time next week the
Guardian
will be online, and our Internet edition won't use any paper at all! No litter! Isn't that great?!”

Dr. Barnes disliked displays of emotion, especially anger. It wasn't professional. So in an abnormally quiet voice, Dr. Barnes said, “Yes, that's a fine idea, Cara. Well then. Please . . . go out to the front office now . . . and ask Mrs. Cormier . . . for a pass . . . to your class. And close the door behind you . . . please.”

Two minutes later Cara left the office. Dr. Barnes's door was still shut.

If it hadn't been against the rules, Cara Landry would have skipped down the hall, all the way back to her science class.

MR. LARSON HAD not been a favorite among his fellow teachers in recent years. He was too standoffish, too solitary.
Most of the other teachers disapproved of the wildness of his classes. To the teachers who had been around a long time, seeing Mr. Larson become less and less professional about his teaching had been especially sad, because they remembered the old Karl Larson.

But
The Landry News
had gotten everyone's attention. Every teacher had watched the newspaper grow from one sheet to two, then to three and four. They saw the quality of the writing and marveled at it. “Fifth-graders!” they said to each other as they passed the
News
around the teachers' room. “Larson's got
fifth
-graders doing this kind of work! Amazing!”

Most of the teachers had met Cara Landry. They knew that the success of the newspaper was due in large part
to her hard work and energy. But they also knew that it was no accident that
The Landry News
had come out of room 145. Without the experience and the guidance and the understanding of Karl Larson,
The Landry News
could not have become what it was.

So, when the teachers' union representative was notified about the disciplinary hearing, the faculty rallied around Mr. Larson. There was a teacher's meeting, and the vote of support was unanimous.

Right away, Ms. Steinert wrote up a press release about the situation. A committee duplicated the eight copies of
The Landry News
and sent sets of them along with the information sheet to every newspaper, radio, and TV station in the greater Chicago area. They printed up handbills with the divorce story on it and mailed it to the home of every taxpayer in Carlton, asking the question, “Should someone be fired because of this?”

Mr. Larson's wife was active in the Chicago teachers' union, and each elementary, junior high, and high school in the metropolitan area received a copy of the press release about the hearing and the charges. The president of the union had made a statement on WGN about the case and the importance of supporting free speech and academic freedom.

Of course, all the parents of the kids in Mr. Larson's class already knew about
The Landry News.
Many of them had been making their own photocopies of the paper for
grandparents and aunts and uncles, so everyone could see the wonderful things those bright kids in Mr. Larson's class were writing and thinking and learning.

A reporter from the
Chicago Tribune
followed up and learned that the kids were now publishing a different paper, the
Guardian,
on their own, including an Internet edition. Four days later, the online
Guardian
had a free link from the
Tribune's
own homepage—and three days after that, the
Sun Times
followed suit.

Before the superintendent had even posted a notice on the town's cable TV channel to list the time and place of the hearing, there had already been articles about the situation in both of the big Chicago newspapers. Mr. Larson had even been interviewed in the Sunday
Tribune,
and a reporter from Channel Nine's evening news had come to the apartments at Edgewater Village to interview Cara Landry.

Cara hadn't liked the interview or the reporter, a woman with bright orange hair. It was a cold and windy afternoon, but the reporter wanted to talk outdoors. She said she looked better on camera in natural light. Barking orders, she got the camera crew and the sound guy in position next to some evergreen bushes.

After finding the best angle for the shot, she faced the camera, smiled, and said, “I'm Jordy Matlin, coming to you live from the Edgewater Apartments in Carlton. This is the home of Cara Landry, a young lady whose newspaper is at
the center of a local controversy. Now Cara, tell our viewers, was it your teacher or your principal who got you in trouble about this newspaper?”

Cara wasn't expecting such a question. She froze up.

The reporter stopped smiling, lowered her microphone, and yelled, “Cut!” Bending so close that Cara could smell the acrid scent of her hair spray, Jordy Matlin said, “This is the part where I ask you questions, and you answer them, okay? All you have to do is listen to the question, and when I hold out the microphone, you talk. All right?” The camerawoman cued the reporter with a count of five, and then Jordy asked Cara the same question. “Now, Cara, tell us, was it your teacher or your principal who got you in trouble about this newspaper?” This time, Cara was ready. She had remembered that this was just like writing for the newspaper, only she'd be talking instead. All she had to do was tell the truth in a kind way. So Cara said, “Neither. And I'm not in trouble. The newspaper's not even in trouble, really. It's just a difference of opinion about what should go into a newspaper made at a school.”

The reporter tilted the microphone back toward herself and said, “This story about a divorce that you published—didn't you think this would cause some problems? If this isn't just a story, say, if this really happened, then some family's business has been spread all over town. And, of course, many churchgoers think divorce itself is bad. Didn't you think there might be a problem here?”

Cara looked into the camera and said, “I wasn't thinking about anything except giving someone the chance to tell a story—and it's a story that I think has been good for a lot of kids to read.”

The camera stayed on Cara's face for another three seconds, and then the reporter said, “Cut,” quickly shook Cara's hand, and turned on her heel and clicked off across the parking lot, talking with her producer. Cara heard her say, “Now we need a shot of the school, and fifteen seconds each with the principal, the superintendent, and the school board president. And we've got to find this teacher that they're trying to ax. We can lay out some copies of the kid's newspapers and get a collage shot back in the studio before we do the full mix. Ted tells me he's holding two minutes for us in the local segment, but we have to really hustle if we're going to make it.” All the newspeople piled into two white vans
and roared off toward the center of town.

Cara was disappointed. She thought there would be more to it than that. She'd only gotten to say about three sentences, and it was such a complicated story. Fifty or sixty words wasn't enough. And what had the reporter called Mr. Larson . . . “this teacher they're trying to ax”? Cara winced at that, wishing she had used her moment on camera to say something that would have helped take the heat off Mr. Larson.

Joanna Landry came over and put Cara's coat around her shoulders. Cara smiled up at her mom and said, “Now I know why I like newspaper stories better than TV news stories.” Her mom nodded and smiled. “That reporter was kind of a tough bird. Still, you did just fine, Cara honey. Now let's get in out of this wind.”

Based on the number of phone calls received at the superintendent's office, the location of the hearing was moved from the town hall to the high school auditorium so there would be enough room for everyone who was planning to attend.