Book Academy

The New York’s Greatest Journalist

Who Never Wrote Anything

    I’m the greatest journalist in New York. However, I’ve never written a whole letter.

  Once, in one of those bars in the city, I placed a period on the page! I requested the waiter to give the napkin to the woman holding a corgi which was enjoying a lollipop.  

  Maybe it was the fifth letter that week. But I never wrote those letters myself.

  I was already used to taking some poems from some old newspapers and giving them to my crushes. However, claiming that I never wrote is an exaggeration. I indeed modified one sentence or a word.

   When I wasn’t writing easy letters, I was looking for a job! And it was tough. When they called me for interviews, there were fifty other very well-groomed guys in front of me, and everything always ended with that famous phrase “anything needed, we’ll get in touch.” which, in the good suburban translation, meant: “get out of our way stupid. We have more important people to interview.”

   But the worst part was when they asked about these skills things. If drinking beer was one of them, I would already be employed! It was humiliating to sit in front of those pompous, hurried, skillful gentlemen. When one of them pressed me, asking if there was anything I did very well, I explained: I like writing.

   My competitor interrupted, stating with all the conviction in the world: I not only like writing, but I am an author. I even have a book published that became a bestseller. Check it out here on my website page. 

   The interviewer’s eyes widened, and he was too engrossed to notice my hands reaching over the tray, picking up the yummy sandwich, which he was probably thinking about eating in a few minutes. I left the room and quickly realized that this lack of confidence was nonsense and didn’t help.

So, I created an account on a popular social media platform. In my bio, I stated that I am a writer. 

   However, the famous one was just the app because I only had one follower. It was the Corgi account from the woman at the bar. And the photo of that dog licking a lollipop wasn’t very professional.

  I went to sleep and woke up to my cell phone exploding with notifications.

  I still don’t know exactly what happened, but suddenly, I had 30 million followers. They say these things happen rarely. It’s probably an error in the algorithm.

  Suddenly, I had more followers than any business professional in New York.

  Many messages are in my inbox, desperately asking to see my poems, books, and compositions. After all, what was I writing? Everyone wanted to know.

   That morning, after searching on the web, I found a job position as a writer at one of the biggest newspapers in the world. I applied with little confidence, but within 30 minutes, I was called for an interview.

   Arriving there, I found the same young men well-groomed as always. I didn’t have good clothes, and I always liked to walk sloppily, which may have made it difficult to get a job. I was too busy worrying about the rent, jumping from one place to another. 

   But that day, I passed in front of everyone. I have never seen my name pronounced with such respect: Mr. Jared Lagos.

  In the room, the man immediately asked about my most well-known publication because he couldn’t recall reading anything of mine.

  I didn’t expect this question to come up, but I immediately created a fun project: Bar Letters. I told him it was a very famous piece of prose on the internet that everyone knew about it.

  I confess I expected to be unmasked at that moment. All it would take was a 30-second search. But then I heard: Of course, I remember that one, everyone knows it!

   You are the most followed journalist, not only in New York but in the world. What makes you want to work at this humble newspaper?”

   I replied: Look at how I dress; I’m a humble guy. My business is to write, and even if this newspaper does not live up to my fame, it is still a prestigious newspaper.”

   We had a good time talking about my beautiful apartment in Manhattan and how I got my first million followers. This time, I didn’t need to steal a sandwich. I was offered a glass of champagne. 

   They offered me a newspaper column dedicated to social media marketing and asked me to lead a course on maintaining loyal online readers.

   The following week, I appeared on a popular talk show. A month later, I traveled to cover the Olympics and a major European conference.

   At the event, I spoke about my non-existent books, and everyone said: “Of course I read it. Everyone knows this one.” But the big problem came when I misspelled a word.

   Not only did I write it, but I pronounced it wrong, leaving no doubt about the error. A journalist questioned how a great writer like me, with so many followers and prestige, could not know how to write something so simple.

   And that was when I said that he was very wrong. I proved on the board by a plus b that was the best way to write, the grammar was wrong, and I formally proposed before the conference, the grammatical change of the word.

   It was an uproar. Everyone said that what he says is well-founded, society is changing and the way of writing must change too.

   Now, I had reached a level that any writer would dream of: I began making grammatical changes to the English language.

   I could tell you more about it, but right now, I’m getting ready to have lunch with the mayor. First of all, I need to take a selfie here from the balcony of my new apartment in Manhattan for my now 50 million followers.

The “Si