They were not at fault. The school paper was meant after all for distribution within the school, a few copies did make it out of the student and teacher body but they didn't have much of interest fot the general public.
Not any more.
Saturday morning saw the residents of Riverdale and surrounding areas wake up to copies of The Blue And Gold on their doorsteps, mailboxes, stores, supermarkets, bus stops, literally everywhere. Some thought it was a gimmick, probably the school doing a charity drive. And then they saw the front page.
Riverdale has made history.
The same was true online. Halfway around the world, excited young people and wizened old people in Russia, China and India were tweeting and posting about Riverdale. It was being labeled as the new Cambridge or Oxford. People actually searched like mad to find out if Riverdale had an university or college. The Blue And Gold homepage and the Riverdale High website moved to the top of Google's search results.
And that's when the floodgates opened.
Media from all over the world gorged on the info posted on The Blue And Gold, they managed to find out the email address of the editor and mails started swamping her mailbox. They also found a phone number but after a hard night's work, she and her friends were dead tired and needed some shut eye.
The Jones and The Doileys were amazed. The Jones especially since they had very little idea of what their son was upto. Now they knew. Their son had made Riverdale very, very proud. Pop Tate's Chocklit Shoppe was filled with the boys buzzing about the news.
"Jug and Dilt sure hit the Bulls Eye !" Chuck said.
"The bull is called ACM ? That's a funny name." Moose said.
"Very funny Moose." Chuck laughed "Hey Archie, where's Veronica ?"
"I don't know." Archie said "Smithers said she is sleeping."
"Funny, that's what Midge's mom said." Moose said.
"And Nancy's too." said Chuck, then he sniggered "Guess the girls can't be bothered even for this !"
Moose and Archie nodded. Pop Tate smiled to himself.
"I wonder..." Archie said.
"What ?" Chuck asked.
"How did Betty and her team know about this and publish it so fast ?" Archie asked.
The team from Riverdale High was the first High School team in history to win the ACM contest, defeating the best teams from colleges and universities around the world. Apparently, this contest, little known to the general public was a very big deal since the people who even made it to the finals played key roles in making the Internet World we know today, and these two, sons of a proud Riverdale, won it against all odds.
Not just Riverdale, but neighbouring Oceandale and other cities were also buzzing with the news. The region had very little to boast of, and now in a time when everything seemed to be going wrong, when Americans themselves were losing faith in the US of A, two true blue American teenagers just made history.
Nothing could be sweeter, like a sign from Heaven.
At a time when every Riverdalean was happy, two individuals sat quietly in a room, a copy of The Blue And Gold on the table between them.
The older man smoked his pipe quietly, his eyes on the teenager opposite him, said teenager couldn't look the man with the pipe in his eyes and looked down in shame.
"Perhaps you would care to explain, son ?" the man asked.
"I...I...Dad, believe me, I had no idea." the teenager said.
"Oh really !" The man said, he picked up the paper with a flourish and waved it in the air. "Forsythe Pendleton Jones III and Dilton Doiley, students of Riverdale High and residents of Riverdale City create history. This happened yesterday, the results came out at midnight and the paper prints it and it's everywhere early morning !"
The teenager made fists.
"I ask you how did they pull this off ? I have been in the paper business for 25 years son ! You can't pull of such a thing unless you have a great team and fantastic sources. This is the News of the Century for this region ! And a high school newspaper, which comes out every fortnight, which sends out volunteers for donations and ads in order to just print the copies for school, swamps the entire region with this news ? You really expect me to believe that !" the man shouted.
"Dad, it's just a four page issue. It's nothing !"
"Nothing !" the man said loudly "Do you know that copies have vanished in the first hour and the publishers are being called for more ? Do you know that the advertisers are so happy that the issue was a sell out that they have released all installments ? That they are gifting the publishers with a new industrial grade printer for future copies ? That The New York Times, The Times of London, Le Figaro from Paris, Pravda from Russia, CNN, Fox News, the BBC and even papers from China, Japan and India are quoting this newspaper and it's team in their reports of this event ?"
The teenager remained quiet.
"Is this how informed you are ? Is this the son who will inherit my paper ? Son, your school paper has forever eclipsed our newspaper and every other paper in this region. I ask you, how did they print it so fast ? Even the Stanford University paper and website and the ACM website were not updated that fast."
Silence.
"Answer me, Reginald Mantle Jr." his father said curtly.
"I...I don't know Dad, I really don't know."
"You are pathetic ! Go and learn from your friend Ms. Cooper how great stories are made and papers are run ! She is much better suited to run my paper than you !"
Mantle Jr. never felt so humiliated in his life.