SOP: Bad News Day

Stephanie wondered what on earth she'd been thinking when she volunteered to be leader of the Student Organised Press. She couldn't do it. She even struggled to write decent articles. Now she had to lead a club meeting? The witch had struggled for weeks to come up with an idea and the one she finally fell upon she was sure would fall apart. Now though it was too late. The messages have been sent out and the members were coming into the club room to face a very nervous leader.

When she could no longer put it off Stephanie clapped her hands together to get the attention of the members. "Hello everyone," she said in greeting. "Welcome to a new term of Student Organised Press. I'm Stephanie Henrau your club leader and today we will be talking about bad news." She paused as she watched for looks of boredom, confusion or something in between. Stephanie did not expect enthusiasm. "The papers are usually full of it. Both muggle and wizard. There isn't much difference. So why is so much of it bad? Is there a lack of good things? Um..." Stephanie hastily looked at her scribbled notes. "Is there a better way of erm conveying it?" Crap. She was beginning to sound like Chris. Using fancy words instead of something simpler.

Since there was going to be a new club leader, Ruby was excited to see what she would come up with. She liked when Caleb was the leader and was sure that Stephanie would also be a great leader. She was back to her cheery self when she skipped into the meeting. She smiled at the new club leader before taking her seat and listening to what she had to say.

It was true, there was more bad news than good. "I guess bad news means more drama," she spoke up once the leader was finished talking. "More people like things when they're interesting, they like being able to talk about it amd guess what happens next. They like following the story." People enjoyed others misery, it was just human nature.

The meeting was off to a reasonably good start but then Stephanie was at a loss as to how to continue the flow of conversation. She was bad at this leadership thing. Captaining, prefecting, club leading. All of them were a monumental failure in her life. How did she go on with the things which had been shared. She looked down at her notes to see what else she might have written down on the topic.

"Um. Yes. That's it exactly," she said in agreement with Ruby. "People do seem to find bad news more interesting than good." It wasn't so nice when the bad news happened to your own family as Stephanie discovered back when she was nine and lost her mother. She swallowed. They had to push on with the meeting. "Wh-what about other things? Good news? Is there ever on the front page?" And somehow she managed to go to a flip side without even planning to do so. Yes she was a failure at this.