Putting together the newspaper each month is challenging and time consuming. Reading through all the stories to make sure they meet our standards and then figuring out what section to put them in takes careful decision-making. This is, of course, following the traditional physical newspaper model. Like many online things, it mimics the real. Like nut loaf. Why though? This issue, like each issue, has many stories that are equally many categories. The two that stood out and made me wring my hands this go around was the article about the thousands of girls aged 10-14 in South Africa who were pregnant last year and the story about how the Catholic Church helped prevent an 11-year-old rape victim from getting an abortion. My gut reaction was that these stories belonged in the Crime section. Clearly these are rape stories. But then I reconsidered that this privileges the rapists, so to focus on the girls more, they were both Health stories. Yet, unfortunately, they are really about Politics. But if we bow to this cynicism, then all stories would be in this category. It frustrates and disappoints me. Separating out these stories immediately signals to readers how to think about the content. And while it is what we do, I wish there was another way. We will have to explore this further. We do not have a Religion section.
-Ashley E. Remer
Editor
Girl News International