Even though I'm a programmer, I did take journalism in high school, and worked as a humor columnist for my college newspaper. In high school, the paper was ful

Even though I'm a programmer, I did take journalism in high school, and worked as a humor columnist for my college newspaper. In high school, the paper was fully funded by advertising. As such, each student who worked on the paper was responsible for selling a certain amount of advertising each quarter, with your grade depending upon it (no, really! I could have been writing on the level of Normal Mailer, yet if I sold no ads, at best I could expect a D- (in the US, that's the lowest passing grade)). I was there to write, not to sell (and hell, I never complained about the stories I had to write, having gotten stuck with stuff no one else wanted to write about). It took an intervention by my mom to get me out of that class. Now, I can understand the the need for advertising, but to force grades based upon money raised, especially seeing how it's not the primary purpose of the class? Drama class (yes, I was also a drama geek in high school) also relied upon advertising (in the program bills, plus the occasional fund raiser) but grades there weren't dependent upon the amount of money raised, nor was everybody expected to sell (or at least the drama teacher realized that for some people (ahem) their skills lied elsewhere (in my case, accounting)). College was a bit different. I'm not sure if there was a journalism major, and working on the newspaper was open to anyone willing to work. I only got involved because I had time to kill on Wednesdays, and all I did was write a humor column (http://www.conman.org/people/spc/writings/murphy/ http://www.conman.org/people/spc/writings/murphy/) and it ended because the paper ended in a major scandal, involving student funding and an inappropriate relationship with the student government (which itself was mired in a huge scandal, where the President resigned somewhat suspiciously, along with the Senate Speaker; then the Judicial branch declared the recently held elections invalid, and the Senate responded by starting impeachment proceedings against the Justices---nice to see college was preparing them for life in the US government). The newspaper tried to go it alone, off campus (and by taking all the equipment from the former on-campus office to the new off-campus office) but it folded in less than a year. I think it took over a decade before a new newspaper (new name even) started. So yes, I did learn quite a bit working for a high school and college newspaper. I just don't think I learned anything related to journalism though.