Only once in my long and scintillating life have I appeared on TV. I was six years old; the show was KCTS Cooks: Chicken. I wore a foofy pink dress and great big glasses, beside my shoulder-padded mother in a very 90s pseudo-kitchen. I stood for endless hours under hot, bright lights — en pointe on a stool so I could see over the counter — but it was no use as I was shrouded and buffeted constantly by the arms of cooking adults. My mom exchanged witty banter with Bob and Kathy Something as they made chicken satay, and when my part came — the assembling of the cucumber salad — my 50-pound body could hardly contain my excitement. I forgot my lines completely, but I will never forget the euphoria I felt as I read aloud the words “granulated sugar…?” from the cue card.

That night I went to sleep a star, and in the following weeks I received exclamations of “I saw you on TV!” from everyone from my babysitter’s mom, to my piano teacher, to my own awed and worshipful friends. Ever since then, I have craved the spotlight and have tried, unsuccessfully, for another shot at fame. In fifth grade, I attended a post-9/11 candlelight vigil and, despite my best efforts at looking incredibly tormented, King5 only got close enough to interview the kid directly next to me. Also in fifth grade (I don’t know why I was so motivated that year) I literally screamed out a chunk of my lung trying, to no avail, to get on the Safeco Jumbotron at a Mariner’s game. I’m two inches too short to be America’s next top model, my singing is never encouraged by those around me, and I’m not smarter than a fifth-grader. I have tried everything short of organized crime to see my face on the small screen once more…but no dice.

So you could say I was distraught when I opened CosmoGirl! on a flight home from the far reaches of the earth, to find an announcement for MTV’s new reality show, The Paper. Running eight episodes in the first quarter of 2008, it will follow the stressful, dramatic lives of young, talented journalists working on their high school newspaper — at Cypress Bay High School in Weston, Florida. Really, Music Television? Are you honestly going to bring it to that level? I have been thwarted by the cruel sirens of fate, otherwise known as executive producers Dave Sirulnick, Marshall Eisen, Lindsey Bannister, Jessica Chesler, and Sam Simmons. I maintain that The Messenger’s video application was lost in the mail or something, or was otherwise rejected because I wasn’t on staff yet. The inhumanity of it all is just staggering.

But I’m going to pretend I’m not preparing a painkiller cocktail right now and cheerfully admit defeat to Cypress Bay, the four-year-old home of the Lightning. With 5,500-some-odd kids, they are apparently the only high school in Weston and the largest in the country, or possibly just in Florida; and I can’t play the race card because the student population is 45% white. Weston was established as a city of pre-planned communities in 1996 on a snake-infested drained swamp that used to belong to Disney, and the fourth FAQ on the Weston City website is, “What should I do if I find an alligator in my yard?” Their newspaper, The Circuit, is staffed by sixty students and supervised by English/journalism teacher Rhonda Weiss, and prints six thousand color copies of each 32-page issue, seven times a school year. The Messenger definitely produces like twice as many (albeit black-and-white); and I got beef with the super-catchy slogan on The Circuit’s website, which urges one to “Support The Circuit…buy a Shirtcuit!” But I suppose the fact that they’ve won a few journalism awards (even though they’re all from Florida) — as well as the fact that two of the editors are dating — deems them somewhat worthy of a reality show. I guess.

And before I start griping again, it has to be said that MTV is taking a somewhat admirable risk in greenlighting The Paper, as previous journalism-centered shows have either bombed or gone largely unnoticed and slipped off the air as inconspicuously as possible. I’m told this happened with Bravo’s Tabloid Wars, as well as with FOX’s Anchorwoman and MTV’s I’m With Rolling Stone, although I don’t actually know because I’ve only vaguely heard of the latter. But the folks at MTV have fallen into the comfortable patter of hot skanks doing unremarkable things — the outermost limits of good taste are stretched beyond recognition with every passing episode of The X-Effect or lesbian Next — and they know it.

I’m not trying to say that The Paper will transform MTV into a high-brow network. There will be, I assure you, a ton of petty, self-indulgent drama in The Paper. Creeping deadlines will strain and crumble the beautiful relationship between those two editors, and backstabbing and wailing confessionals of “My article got cut!” will abound. And I’m especially looking forward to an event alluded to in a bizarrely intriguing teaser I found on the internet: “Writers’ deadlines had come and gone, editors had edited, the layout team had added their final touches, and all that remained was for the newspaper’s computer file to be converted into a PDF — the only way it could be sent off to the printer. Where was the one guy who knew how to do this particular task? At ‘High School Musical on Ice,’ of course.”

But the point here, I think, is that The Paper will show to the world kids who are working hard for something they care about — their college applications. Because it’s time for reality TV to show real drive, and because coed chocolate-syrup wrestling for a shot at love just doesn’t count.

I guess I’ve been forced to put aside my grief over my lost title of the nation’s next teen heartthrob, and give some credit to MTV — and to you, too, Cypress Bay High School, with your snazzy color pictures and “provocative” articles — at least long enough for me to yell and whine at the television through all eight episodes. And now it’s back to scheming ways to become a star. Hey, if I drive to Weston in diapers to mace Rhonda Weiss or something, I might be able to get on CourtTV…and Maury’s always an option…

Oh, whatever. I’m going to go watch my KCTS Cooks: Chicken tape again.