Congratulations! The Update just turned one!
OK, so The Update may not technically turn one until September (or earlier, by some metrics) but it has just survived its first academic year at La Chat.
So, let’s take a look back. How has The La Chat Update’s first year been?
The Update was the brainchild of creators Ruhamah Weil, Parker Bryan, Joe “Lenses” Cook and Joseph Watson (people who are also winners of the Whitest Name Awards) with website construction aided by Devansh Sachdeva (who wasn’t even nominated). While The Update wasn’t made public until early September, it had had its first article – which has since been deleted – published in July.
The Update probably took its biggest leap forward when the creators requested the help of the beautiful, intelligent, God-like, charismatic, strong and humble Finn C Boyle (who is, coincidentally, the writer of this article) to write a few articles. He is now, not only rightfully designated as the Sexiest Man Alive, but also the most prolific writer of The Update.
The first few weeks at school were a trying time for the fledgling website. Or at least, they felt that way. There were talks about The Update getting absorbed by intercampus newspaper Et Cetera, and the website tried to spread out to younger year groups, who hadn’t heard of it as much at that point. However, like the Little Engine That Could, The Update persevered.
Early on the (mostly honorary) positions of Editors were awarded. The cool, ‘with-it’ Student Life editors are Matthew Delarue, Tara Dhakwa and Maya Warakaulle. The intelligent, perceptive World Events editors are Marc Bordui, Alex Jones and Abdullah Shah. The nerdy, virginal Arts, Tech & Entertainment editors are Gustaf Palm and Finn C Boyle. And finally, the active but lonesome Sports Editor, Paul Higgins.
The very first original Update video was featured in September. Unlike most of the videos that came after it, this video wasn’t an interview of a specific person, but a (very sad) protest welcoming refugees in front of the United Nations. The very first Update Interview was of Captain and co-founder of the Palestinian Women’s Football Team, Honey Thalijeh, and was performed by Eloise McMinn Mitchell and filmed (as always) by Joe “Lenses” Cook.
October brought The Update’s first controversy. Specifically, regarding changes to the tech rules in the caf and MMC. Joe “Lenses” Cook wrote an article on the hate directed towards the school’s administration; and believe me, if there’s one thing you do not do, it’s make the lives of a bunch of spoilt La Chat kids slightly less than perfect.
Understandably, calling a hater a hater only increases hate. One specific hater wanted to write an article in the aftermath of this controversy, blaming the (then two-week old) Academic Committee and StuCo for the changes. The article, riddled with misinformation, wasn’t published for obvious reasons. Then, like a game of Telephone, this got twisted into “ERMAHGERD, MR. WOODS IS CENSORRING TEH UPDATE AHHHHHH!!!1111!!!!!”.
So yeah, fun.
On a lighter note, in December of 2015, The Update probably reached its highest levels of prestige yet (whether that means we’ve been going downhill since then, we’ll never know) when it both published its very first exclusive articles (shameless plug here) and, more importantly, got one of our interviews featured on Pink News, Mic and Yahoo News (as well as quoted in GQ and the Huffington Post).
All that history aside, what have we learnt since then?
- Political comment articles that get people angry get a lot of views. Like this one, or this one, or this one.
- For some reason, people really like Apocalypse Now (its review is the SIXTH most viewed article this year; the others were about various school events. WHY?)
- Slideshow articles completely ruin The Update’s viewing statistics (each click on a picture is counted as a separate view, resulting in image curator Joe “Lenses” Cook getting 256,013 views)
- You can write all the informative, ‘important’ articles you want, but the most views will always go to that one article you wrote about something like the Kardashians.
- La Chat students will get more angry about not being able to use their phone in a specific room for 20 minutes than refugees dying. We really have our priorities in order, guys.
- Haters gonna hate.
Thanks to everyone who helped write this year and remember if you want to write anything just send us an email at theupdate.ecolint@gmail.com or sign up here.
The Update 