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School Newspaper Newshound

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Suzy: Oh, hush. They don't pay us to write the truth.
Colin: They don't pay us at all! We are an unofficial school paper!

The counterpart to the Absurdly Powerful Student Council is an absurdly elaborate school paper with production values and writing quality that real commercial newspapers would envy. The activities of the Absurdly Powerful Student Council and other very popular students will be chronicled in minute detail by the school newspaper newshounds that staff the paper, all of whom have very serious aspirations to a career in Journalism. Quite often they will also report about events around the city or town that the story is set in. Major plot points will be revealed — or distorted!on the front page of the school newspaper. A few schools even have radio and/or television programs run by a "broadcasting club".

Real schools, particularly of the Elaborate University High type, sometimes have real newspapers of this level of quality, but they tend to report actual news or fluff pieces, rather than the sorts of gossip that find their way into anime school newspapers. For these reasons, the club is often a functional antagonist to the Absurdly Powerful Student Council.

Chances are good (in fiction) this student later gets a career as an Intrepid Reporter.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Hoshizaki High School in Asteroid in Love has a newspaper club. However, unlike most examples in manga, this Newspaper Club is actually a Club Stub, and the newspaper they make—even after passing through the advising teacher with an 80% rejection rate—has few readership, even worse than the Earth Science Club, whose newsletter is strictly confined to astronomy and geology. It's to a point that the Newspaper Club attempts to scoop material to blackmail the Earth Science Club.
  • The Press Society of Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!, although they do online articles for the Binan High website instead of a hard-copy newspaper.
  • Saehara Takeshi of D.N.Angel, though he has a tendency to double as a one-man version of Those Two Guys.
  • Maya from Detective School Q Boarding School case. She didn't know that one of her tapes had vital info about the case, and it gets her killed in the manga and almost killed in the anime...
  • The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.: Manako Jouten, the president of the Newspaper Club, is a malicious example. She will do anything for a good story and hounds the cast following the shipwreck arc in the hopes that they'll get a good scoop. She'll even scoop to spreading slander, gossip, fake news, and manipulated images to further this end.
  • Nanami Jinnai from El Hazard isn't even in the broadcasting club, but she accompanies them in order to humiliate her older brother Katsuhiko on live TV with (truthful) accusations of rigging the student council election.
  • Food Wars!: Mitsuru Soutsuda, a member of the Tootsuki Academy Newspaper Club, becomes impressed with Soma Yukihira after his performance against Alice Nakiri in the fall classic, and begins hounding him all over the place begging him to let him write an article about him. Soma eventually lets him tag along when he goes to Erina's house to request for criticism.
  • Averted with the Mass Media Club in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War. Despite Shuchi'in Academy being a school for the ultra-rich and the club being run by the daughter of a major newspaper's editor, their production quality is in line with a real-life school newspaper and they only cover mundane school events and local news. Karen and Erika do both obsess with the student council (as fangirls), but they tend to only do that on their personal time.
  • Kaitou Saint Tail parodies it with Sawatari, an otherwise competent reporter with a penchant for making absurd claims about journalism before disproving them two seconds later.
  • Three of these characters are introduced in episode 29 of Sgt. Frog, trying to investigate the aliens living with Fuyuki and pay for it dearly.
    • The club members are Tsukigami Chiryu, Yamaura Teimei, and the yet-to-be-named cameraman.
  • La Corda d'Oro has Nami Amou who mainly reports on the school's music competition.
  • The Broadcasting Club in Marmalade Boy. Specially Furutachi-sempai, who once seriously screws up by taking pics of Miki and Yuu's recently re-married parents. To his credit, he immediately regretted the mess he had caused and not only alerted the parents when Miki and Yuu were harassed by a Sadist Teacher but managed to bring them to the school so they would give their own testimony, leading the parents to pwn said teacher.
  • Akemi Mikan from My Monster Secret starts out as an aggressive scoop-monger who supplements her club's inability to find actual interesting stories by making crap up. She can get away with this by adding a disclaimer on every newspaper saying that everything printed is complete fiction (and saved the club in the process, since students are more willing to read juicy Blatant Lies than boring stories that are true). She does seem to downplay this trope, however, since she has to ask students for permission to print any real stories she comes across— though she doesn't have to if they're completely false.
  • Kazumi Asakura from Negima! Magister Negi Magi has magic-powered UAVs to assist her in this role.
  • Nurse Hitomi's Monster Infirmary: Komori the bat girl loves "exposing the sordid scandals of the school's high and mighty".
  • Kaori Shimakura from Ojamajo Doremi is an 8-year-old version of this trope. There are deeper reasons for it, though: it's to cover up for her severe self-esteem problems.
  • Ouran High School Host Club had one of these purposely trying to dig up any dark secrets of the club, especially on Tamaki, making it seem more like a School Paparazzi Hound. Naturally, for a school catering to the stinkin' rich, it is extremely elaborate, despite its almost zero readership. The school newspaper is straight-up called a gossip rag by Hikaru and Kaoru. The fact that despite being the son of the head of a famous newspaper the Newspaper Club's head doesn't dispute this fact (and during the episode that the newspaper is featured in is actively attempting to get information out of Haruhi that he can use to humiliate Tamaki) serves only to bolster this claim. It's also outright stated that the reason that the newspaper's circulation is almost nothing is because it focuses on dirty secrets of various other students instead of anything newsworthy.
  • Pretty Cure:
  • The Prince of Tennis:
    • Despite not belonging to the school newspaper, Sadaharu Inui fits some of the tropes when he goes in his "data gathering" rounds, to the point of stalking his own teammates more than once just to get their reactions (and getting beaten up when they find out).
    • In the Chinese drama, Tomoka Osakada is actually a member of the school paper.
    • Word of God says that Wakashi Hiyoshi is in the school paper, and it also states that when not in the tennis fields, he seems to always be on the lookout for strange phenomena such as UFOs.
  • A-ko, B-ko, and C-ko from Revolutionary Girl Utena (and E-ko and F-ko from The Movie). Who are not to be confused with the characters from Project A-Ko.
  • The main characters from Rosario + Vampire are in the Newspaper Club. They are often involved in several battles and even crimes, but they never mention their involvement at all to avoid even more attention from everyone at school. On the plus side, this gives them an excuse to go into the human world during summer vacation, under the guise of "Investigative Reporting". On the minus side, they usually end up running into monstrous conflicts even there.
  • Ranko Hata from Seitokai Yakuindomo, a Camera Fiend who packs her own miniature TV studio. She also has a Money Fetish.
  • Ayako's friend Mari Kawai from Slam Dunk is a member of Shohoku's broadcasting club, and she really wants to be this.

    Comic Books 
  • The Ultimate Marvel version of Jessica Jones (who in the main Marvel Universe is a former reporter for the Daily Bugle) runs the school TV station at Peter Parker's high school. She knows Spidey is one of the other students and is planning to track him down.
  • Dick Grayson's high school friend Craig Rockland went running into danger on occasion for stories for their high school newspaper the Owl. Some of his articles were later picked up by Gotham papers since he tended to write about things like the teacher's union that people outside the school had an interest in.

    Fan Works 
  • in the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, the Assassins' Guild School is allowed its own student newspaper, the Cloak and Dagger. In the hands of editor Rupert Mericet note  it becomes a lethal weapon and every new edition is very carefully edited by members of the teaching staff - just in case. Rupert Mericet is written as a deliberate Expy of Peter Cook, the co-inspiration behind satirical magazine Private Eye, who edited the student newspaper at Shrewsbury School and used it as a vehicle for slipping through items of gossip and potential libel concerning the teaching staff. Younger talents such as Mariella Smith-Rhodes and cartoonist Nigella Wiggs add to the sedition, and in fact the C&D is regularly mined by the gossip column of the Ankh-Morpork Times for useful snippets about the Guild. The Times pays well for stories - and Nigella's cartoons - which is a useful addition to a student's spending power.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The protagonist of Assassination of a High School President.
  • Gonzo of Beware The Gonzo got kicked off the school paper for being his, he starts his own gonzo-style paper as a result.
  • Angie in the movie adaptation of Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
  • Hamlet 2 treats the school paper reviews of the drama club productions very seriously. Although that's more of a testament to the main character's quirkiness than a universal opinion.
  • The title character in Tamara busted her high school's football team for using anabolic steroids, her story in the school paper making the news. The football team is not happy and wants revenge, leading to the Deadly Prank that kicks off the plot.
  • Laurie in The Wave (1981).
  • Claire in The Witch Files, whose ambition is to be a TV journalist and eventually a national news anchor. It is her filming a story about detention that kicks off the plot.

    Literature 
  • Lois Lane becomes one of these in the Young Adult Lois Lane series by Gwenda Bond. She writes for the "Daily Scoop", a teen-oriented website owned by the Daily Planet. In the first book in the series Fallout, she follows a story about school bullying that rapidly turns into something more.
  • Raika Nario from Maburaho has a literal aiming sight on her camera and is intent on sniffing out juicy material.
  • Tsutako and Minako from Maria Watches Over Us. Plus later on Minako's soeur Mami, HER soeur Hidemi, and Tsutako's "admirer" Shouko. It's a sprawling series.
  • Winchell in North (and the movie adaptation).
  • Parker Schmidt in No More Dead Dogs runs the school news website single-handed. Wallace Wallace comments that he's everything but the official fact-checker because they don't have one.
  • From Rachel Griffin, Valerie Foxx, Girl Reporter.
  • Sweet Valley High has Elizabeth Wakefield:
    • In Sweet Valley High, she writes a gossip column "Eyes and Ears" for the school newspaper The Oracle. Elizabeth's pursuit of a story often served as either a subplot or a lead-in to the main plot in several books.
    • In Sweet Valley Twins, she's in charge of the sixth-grade newspaper The Sixers.
    • In Sweet Valley University, she switches to TV and becomes an investigative reporter for WSVU, the campus station. She breaks several scandals that become ongoing plot points in the series.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, Tommy turned his school's newspaper into this, complete with allusions to Citizen Kane. In fact, the episode was titled "Citizen Solomon", despite this being the "B" plot.
  • Several Afterschool Special programs centering on censorship were set at a high school newspaper. The scenario usually saw the main protagonist (usually a self-assured high school senior girl who was the editor) uncover some major scandal or wrongdoing, or at the very least, write a story on a subject that paints the school in an unflattering light, the principal getting wind of the newspaper's plans, and efforts to stop the story from being published kick into high gear. The editor will invariably stand his/her ground, and the battle eventually is brought before the school board, and if not resolved go to court. Almost always, the student editor comes out victorious, leaving the administration and/or student athletes to deal with the fallout.
  • Vicki Van Horton on The Amazing Extraordinary Friends is a high school version of Lois Lane, including being obsessed with uncovering Captain X's Secret Identity.
  • The Brady Bunch: In Season 3's "The Power of the Press," Peter joins the Filmore Junior High newspaper staff and gains friends when he publishes their names in his column, "Scoop Brady." However, when Peter gets a poor grade on his science test (he had neglected to study), he decides to bargain for a better grade by writing a flattering article about the teacher (a gentleman nearing retirement age) ... the same teacher he and his fellow students had derided as being dull and using outdated teaching methods. Of course, the episode's moral is enforced fully: "Flattery will get you nowhere," and Peter's "D" on his science test stands.
  • Parodied and lampshaded in an episode of Community, where Greendale is shown to have at least three in-college newspapers. Including one that caters exclusively to the Spanish market.
  • Diff'rent Strokes:
    • One of the best-known episodes of the series — and the template for the Very Special Episode — was the 1983 episode "The Reporter," where Arnold (Gary Coleman) writes a story about a drug deal made on school grounds. The principal, thinking the intended report was a fabrication (or at the very least, is unflattering), wants the story pulled ... until First Lady Nancy Reagan (in the midst of her "Just Say No" campaign) shows up to not only substantiate the story but state that drug pushers are at work in schools across the nation.
    • Arnold continued to write for school newspapers throughout the rest of the series, and the occasional episode was dedicated to his developing journalism career. For instance, the last-aired episode of the series — "The Front Page," aired March 7, 1986 — saw Arnold go undercover to confirm suspicions that a popular athlete was using steroids.
  • Degrassi:
    • Degrassi Junior High features student journalist Caitlin Ryan. While she was never quite as good as she hoped to be, the sequel series shows that she eventually achieved a successful career in broadcast journalism as an adult.
    • On Degrassi: The Next Generation, Caitlin's legacy is carried on by Ellie, who both writes for Degrassi's school paper The Grapevine and interns under Caitlin herself. Ellie at times goes to great lengths for the sake of her reporting; for example, in the Season 3 episode "Take On Me" when she purposefully lands herself in Saturday detention in order to investigate a series of thefts. In season 6, she goes on write for her university's newspaper The Core, and by her final appearance in season 8, she has become one of the paper's editors.
    • In later seasons, Chantay runs her own blog called the Anti-Grapevine, which is about the gossip and news of the school.
  • Vashti Nadira in Faking It, reporter for the school Tumblr, is quite the scoop-getter, especially of Hester High's favorite (faux) lesbian couple.
  • Family Matters: In the fifth-season episode "Opposites Attract," Laura is the editor for the Muskrat Times (the Vanderbilt High School newspaper), and Urkel is a staff reporter.
  • Family Ties: Alex learns a tough lesson on journalism ethics in Season 1's "Big Brother is Watching," when he uncovers a cheating scandal involving his sister, Mallory, and most of the popular students/athletes. Despite an admonition by the advisor not to publish the story with the names, Alex feels obliged to do so ... and he loses his job as a result. Alex adamantly defends his stance, but Steven tells him that while he was correct in publishing an unflattering story, he was unfair by publishing the names of the students involved, none of whom had had their due process yet.
  • Gilmore Girls has Rory, who began the series as an aspiring journalist. Also Paris, who runs the school paper like she's editor-in-chief of the New York Times. She gets worse when she runs the Yale newsroom.
  • Glee seems to get into this trope occasionally, especially with the school news coverage of the prom king/queen elections. Of course, this could just be more of Glee's typical over-the-top exaggerated style.
  • Basically the entire premise of Gossip Girl, although a glitzy blog that's laid out a little too well takes the place of a school newspaper.
  • Richie Cunningham, in at least one Happy Days episode.
  • Motive: The Victim of the Week in "The Dead Hand" is one. She is first seen exposing one of her teachers for selling good grades. One of her later pieces of investigative journalism gets her killed.
  • Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide did their usual half-episode on this.
  • Our Miss Brooks:
    • Walter Denton is editor of the school paper, the "Madison Monitor". From time to time he gets himself into trouble by writing editorials critical of Mr. Conklin or Madison High School in general, i.e. "Cafeteria Strike" and "Threat to Abolish the School Paper". "Marinated Hearing" revolves around Miss Brooks' attempt to keep Walter Denton from publishing an editorial insulting the Board of Education in revenge for only giving students 2½ instead of 3 weeks of Christmas Vacation.
    • Walter also plays the gossip columnist in a couple of episodes, with a column entitled "Campus Dirt: Shoveled by Walter Denton". This is to Miss Brooks' dismay, as he uses the column to blab about her being disappointed that Mr. Boynton is away at a Biologist's Convention.
    • Like any good high school reporter, he's also on the prowl for news. We see him at it in the episode "Kritch Cave".
  • H.G. Wells High School from Phil of the Future has an actual news show rather than a newspaper, and Keely is both reporter and anchor. She loves reporting and it's often mentioned in the series that her dream is to become a reporter/broadcaster. Phil helps her out behind the camera.
  • Sam from Popular.
  • Pretty much the entire cast of Press Gang, but particularly reporter Spike Thomson and features writer Sarah Jackson, fulfill this trope.
  • The school newspaper "Étudiants debout!" (Standing up students!) in Radio Enfer both subvert it and play it straight (except for the production values which are treated rather realistically). Its main writer, Vincent Gélinas, uses to smear anyone he didn't like (or at least Accentuate the Negative) while screaming "It's a SCANDAL!!!", including the principal Mr. Giroux (which backfired spectacularly). In fact, in an aversion of this trope, the newspaper club's (of which Vincent soon becomes the only member thanks to his jerkassery before getting a new member with Dominique Vachon) budget gets cut quite often when the principal has enough of his crap. In the later seasons, though, he's shown to be capable of being a competent journalist following his Character Development (unfortunately, the damage is already done and he always ends up being the only one reading his own newspaper).
    Vincent: (after getting another budget cut) My next editorial will be bloody! ''(makes quick throat-slashing noises)'' Even if I have to write it on toilet paper!
    Mr. Giroux: Good. For once, your newspaper will be useful for something.
  • A variant in Renegadepress.com, and a rather justified variant; the eponymous website, an e-zine, is written by the main students from their school, to their school, about their daily experiences.
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch has Sabrina working her way into the field despite the fact that her favorite subject started out as being science.
  • Saved by the Bell: The New Class: Two episodes center around the school newspaper, the Bayside Breeze. "The People's Choice," from 1994, centers around new faculty adviser Screech's attempts to improve the paper, leading to student staff members skipping class to work on the paper. The 1998 episode "Do the Write Thing" centers on administrative censorship after Mr. Belding withholds publication of an article about student athletes getting preferential treatment for such things as discipline and assignments. (The original series had no newspaper-centered episodes, but did have one centering around the school's radio station, KKTY, which has a news program.)
  • Seinfeld: An indiscreet remark in front of a New York University journalism student causes wild rumors to circulate across America about Jerry Seinfeld and his long time companion George. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
  • Chloe from the early seasons of Smallville. She was the editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper in her freshman year. Anyone who's been on a high school newspaper knows how ridiculously unlikely that is. However, considering that her entire staff consists of herself, Clark, Pete Ross, Greg Arkin (who's an early Monster of the Week), and occasionally Lana Lang, plus a couple of computer science students who service the computers, and a couple of photographers, it's perhaps not so surprising. They're all her contemporaries, implying that the entire previous staff of the Torch fell away or graduated the previous year, and she's the only one who's really invested in it early on.
  • Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager claimed to have edited the newspaper of Starfleet Academy as a student, breaking the story of the Maquis rebellion and getting the faculty and the student body polarized and taking sides. He reveals this information to Neelix, spurring him to investigate the ongoing espionage and sabotage situation aboard Voyager. Neelix, the ship's cook, is then inspired to use his television program A Briefing With Neelix to do some Real Journalism, and Neelix, and ultimately plays an important role in the unmasking of spy Michael Jonas. Ah, the power of the media.
  • Veronica Mars was on her high school newspaper staff as a photographer, and later did some actual journalizing herself. The school's television news program was a common sight. (This is not as unbelievable as it sounds; it's the only public school in a county filled with people who would be paying large metric buttloads of property and other taxes.) In college, she joined the newspaper, but didn't stay; the paper was hip-deep in the factionalization of the campus, and Veronica wanted no part.
  • Robbie from Victorious turned The Slap (the school's networking blog site) into this, only instead of proper newshound he's a Paparazzi journalist (his blogshow is titled Robarazzi).
  • Somewhat subverted in Zoey 101. Jeremiah Trottman, face of school TV network PCA News, doesn't aspire to become a news reporter. He is in it to impress the occasional airhead and for a future as an anchorman with a 'seven-figure' salary. Apart from regular reporting (dances, elections,...), the network is mostly abused for revenge plots.

    Radio 
  • Each era of long-running audio drama Adventures in Odyssey has had a character fit this role; first Lucy Cunningham-Schultz; then a post-Character Development Liz Horton and in the most recent episodes, Zoe Grant.

    Roleplay 
  • In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Rhys is in charge of the newspaper at Rogers High and dedicates most of his time to writing for it. Even though, prior to the empowering, there wasn't a lot to write about. His dream in the future is to become a writer for the NY Times.
  • Survival of the Fittest has Matt Wittany and Ken Lawson, the former of which has apparently interviewed just about everybody in Southridge High School at some point, including recluse Bobby Jacks.
    • More recently we've been introduced to Amber Whimsy, whose articles are infamous for regularly invading students' private lives, with some help from her best friend Paige Single. She's more of a subversion though, as none of her stories of this nature have ever made it to print.

    Video Games 
  • You can read the school paper in Escape From St. Mary's, but when you meet a reporter, she turns out rather apathetic. No one reads the paper but the staff.
  • The protagonists of JumpStart Adventures 4th Grade: Sapphire Falls are on an assignment for their school newspaper. This is basically just an excuse for getting them involved in the plot, and it's barely mentioned after the first few scenes.
  • Emily Imagawa, one of your daughter's friends, in Princess Maker 5.
  • Ran Hibiki from Rival Schools. It's a fighting game, of all things, so Ran uses her camera and tape recorder as weapons.
  • Yandere Simulator:
    • A dark example would be Info-chan. She encourages the Villain Protagonist to kill her rivals so that she could report on it in the school newspaper. She also offers assistance if you give her photographs of a very specific nature.
    • In 1980's Mode Ryoba can join the Newspaper club and use it to either trash the reputation of the rival of the week, boost her own reputation, or improve the school's atmosphere.

    Visual Novels 
  • Marco from Double Homework does picture editing for the school newspaper. Lampshaded, as Marco knows that virtually nobody actually reads the school newspaper, despite its almost professional production quality.
  • Sophia from the Fading Hearts.
  • In Katawa Shoujo, the school has a newspaper club. The members include two extras from Hisao's class, Natsume and Naomi; Hanako later joins them in Lilly's route.
  • In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, Themis Legal Academy senior Miriam Scuttlebutt is the sole member of the newspaper club and roams the school "undercover" in a cardboard box to gather material for her tabloid journalism.
  • In Princess Evangile, Vincennes Academy has a newspaper club. Tamie Nogi is the president, and runs the club enthusiastically, always looking for a good story to cover. Once Masaya enters the school as the first male student, she constantly hounds him for interviews and pictures, something he's surprisingly okay with if it means that the other students will see him as something other than a pervert or voyeur.

    Webcomics 
  • Suzy in Paranatural is fanatic enough about the journalism club that she routinely commits blackmail, theft, and espionage.
  • Parker of Scalie Schoolie is a particularly unscrupulous example. The arc in which she's introduced revolves entirely around her lying for the highest bidder and slandering students with reckless abandon.
  • Ivan Bezdomny in The Wotch, overlapping with Intrepid Reporter. It ends badly for, um... Bezdomny. The name is a direct reference to The Master and Margarita, whose Bezdomny is a sort-of college-age version of this.

    Web Original 
  • Shin in Sailor Nothing like both Ivan Bezdomnies has the issue of sitting on a huge story that involves magic and stuff almost no one will believe. She's sitting on it and plans to publish it as a book one day. In the end, she does, refusing to publish it as fiction despite her publisher's insistence.
  • Whateley Universe: Peeper tries to play himself off as this, but he's not fooling anybody.

    Western Animation 
  • Angelica Pickles tries her hand at it as an All Grown Up! episode's subplot ("Chuckie's in Love").
  • Bob's Burgers: Tina Belcher is the only member of Wagstaff School's newscast club that actually cares about reporting the news, which results in her dominating the coverage of the Mad Pooper's rampage.
  • Milly and Tamiya of Code Lyoko, to the point that they can report on pretty much whatever the hell they want (up to and including love dodecahedrons and embarrassing childhood photos), and follow nearly everyone everywhere with their microphone and video camera. Curiously, despite this equipment, they have only a newspaper.
  • Cow and Chicken episode "Dirty Laundry" featured The Red Guy being hired to manage the school's newspaper, which he turned into a TV network that showed fabricated scandals.
  • The Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "Truth or Ed" has Eddy take over the school newspaper and use it to publish outrageous stories, like Atlantis being found in Johnny 2x4's nostrils.
  • Played for Laughs with AJ and Chester from The Fairly OddParents!.
  • Since it's a cartoon portraying middle school safety patrol officers as Miami Vice style detectives, Fillmore! features its fair share of these characters.
  • The Gravedale High episode "The Grave Intruder" had Duzer take over control of the school newspaper to make up phony stories that cause a lot of problems in the school, such as Coach Cadaver being incensed by a story claiming he has a human brain and Headmistress Crone making advances toward Max Schneider after reading a story that claimed he loved her. Duzer eventually realizes that fake news stories are hurtful when the rest of the class fabricates a story about Duzer loving Frankentyke.
  • Hey Arnold!: "The Big Scoop" revolves around the goings-on at the school paper and a rival offshoot. Note that the viewer doesn't notice its presence before or after.
  • Kim Possible: Ron Stoppable tried his hand at it, and exposed Adrena Lynn.
  • Miraculous Ladybug has a 21st-century spin on the trope; aspiring journalist Alya Césaire runs a popular blog/fansite dedicated to titular superheroine Ladybug, cheerfully oblivious to the fact that Ladybug's civilian identity is her best friend Marinette.
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Ponyville Confidential", a gossip column in a school newspaper (with frighteningly thorough photo documentation) tears the town apart, and the teacher doesn't intervene until after the issue is resolved.
  • In a few episodes of The Simpsons, this role is held by Lisa Simpson or Martin Prince, both reporters for the "Daily Fourth Gradian".
  • Taranee Cook and Irma Lair from W.I.T.C.H. in "Stop the Presses".
    • In season two's episode "L is for Loser", the Grumper sisters join the school radio station (run by Irma) and go on the lookout for juicy gossip.
  • The Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? episode "School Newspaper" had Robot photograph Principal Madman while he was in various situations, resulting in embarrassing stories being fabricated for the school newspaper, such as one headline claiming that Madman peed his pants when he only spilled coffee on himself. Madman tries to get back at Robot by framing him for various misdeeds, but Robot eventually exposes his deceit.

    Real Life 
  • In 1982, the principal of Hazelwood High School removed two pages from the school newspaper that he found objectionable, two stories on teen pregnancy and teen marriage. The author of the stories brought him to court, and the case went all the way up to the Supreme Court. That's right, the highest court in the United States had to decide on the Free Press rights of a school newspaper. Guess they really are Serious Business.

 
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Citizen Frensky

Francine takes pictures of numerous people in their most vulnerable moments all for a scoop.

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