I sat in a kitchen chair this morning and watched the steam rise from my mug. The news on my screen told a story about students and the ink they spill. It is February 25, 2026, and the world feels like a radio tuned to static. I read that teenagers view the press with the same suspicion one might have for a stranger offering a ride in a windowless van.
To my mind, this is a leak in the basement of our house. They believe journalists skip the labor of checking facts. They see a lack of sources as a standard setting. I feel like we are watching the gears of a clock grind to a halt because the hands no longer believe in time.
The report claims more teens see malice in the news than see the quiet work of a reporter at a desk.
These students think a journalist is someone who builds a fire just to watch the smoke. But the truth is usually much duller. It involves phone calls that go unanswered and the smell of old coffee in a windowless office. I’m of the mind that if a teenager views a reporter as a liar, the bridge between the citizen and the city collapses.
The concrete cracks. We lose the map to the grocery store. We lose the name of the man who fixes the streetlights.
I noticed a specific ache in the data regarding ethics. Young people suspect the person behind the keyboard is a ghost with a hidden agenda. They do not see the correction of a mistake as a sign of honesty.
They see it as a failure of the original hunt. This perception is a wall made of thick glass. I think of a high school student in a dark room scrolling through a feed of shadows. If they never learn to trust the record, they will never think to write it themselves. And the silence that follows will be louder than any siren.
Protecting the school newspaper is like maintaining the water pipes under the street.
You do not think about the water until the tap runs dry. I feel like these student writers are the mechanics of our shared reality. They document the score of the game and the budget of the cafeteria. This is the infrastructure of the mind. It is the plumbing of the soul. When a student chooses to verify a rumor instead of repeating it, a light bulb flickers on in a dark hallway.
I believe the light will stay on as long as we keep the power running.
I saw a kid today with a notebook and a pen. He looked at a tree as if he were trying to count every leaf on every branch. I’m of the mind that this curiosity is the antidote to the cynicism found in the reports. The ink is still wet on the page.
The students are still asking questions. We should give them the paper and the space to find the answers. The sun is coming up over the horizon on this Wednesday morning. The world is still here. We just need to make sure someone is there to write down the color of the sky.
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