Perhaps an ending, certainly a beginning, another volume of The Varsity is laid to rest. Obeying the strictures (or comforts) of convention, these final editorial strokes seek to place our own work under the sharpened point of the pundit’s pen. (Scratch that; too grave, stunted; tired of alliteration).
Another year…(tyrannical cliché, you hack)
Perhaps an ending, (No. Delete that craven “perhaps”). An ending (abandon it; it’s late; run the backup file).
…it’s well after midnight now. Most of our readers are sleeping, or perhaps (again with the “perhaps”) only dreaming of sleeping. We’re still here at 21 Sussex Ave., putting out your newspaper for the last time this year (too self-aggrandizing). In print, we’re a collection of disembodied voices, but here we have more than hot air and opinions-we have flesh: Tabassum is downstairs putting the Arts section to bed; Graham is taking one last look at the News flats, still tweaking the headlines just a bit; Zoe wrapped up Science just now: probably heading home to study for an exam; Matt finished Sports early and caught the last train to Ajax; Kara cropped the last photo a few moments ago; Sarah is busy turning someone’s rant into an argument; Rogelio, he’s downstairs too, enveloped in prog rock, making the last issue look like a real newspaper-like he always does; Malcolm, red pen in hand, is silently amending all of the evening’s errata. Elves labouring late into the night; the shoes will be on the table by morning (weary metaphor).
And me, (such a narcissist), I’m upstairs keying these (ostensibly) famous last words up and onto the screen (well past deadline, and your own deadline at that), trying to survey The Varsity’s 124th year. It’s our 49th and final issue…(where is this going? It’s not too late to run that backup). One wants to make it count.
Another volume of The Varsity laid to rest. (Look, you’ve got it all wrong; this whole anxiety of influence thing is really not working, too indecisive, unbecoming of the craft . The idea is to end with a flourish, to say goodbye to your readers, to thank them for their time. It’s their paper after all. More like this: “We haven’t always given you good news, but that’s not what a newspaper does. We have, however, tried to help you get engaged-on this campus, in this city, (perhaps) with the world beyond that of ideas. Many of you have. And (most of the time), we were there to write about it. Some chose to make their mark right here at The Varsity. Over two hundred U of T students helped us fashion the record this year, and for this we are damned proud. You should be too.”)
