August 21, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

CHA editors name successors
by JOEL HOFFMANN

Sam Franklin and Christian Graham

Sam Franklin and Christian Graham wanted to leave a literary legacy at Chestnut Hill Academy — not to stoke their egos or impress their peers but to make sure the written word continues to thrive in their absence.

As co-editors of the school newspaper and literary magazine (and of an independently produced polemic newsletter called True Blue), Franklin, 18, and Graham, 19, refused to settle for mediocrity.

“One issue that always came up is our precision with words,” Graham said in a recent interview. “Despite the volume of time we spent debating the specific uses of specific words, it would make a negligible amount of difference. It speaks to how we both work.”

Graham was not exaggerating. He and Franklin would spend countless hours trying to make each publication perfect. They have gotten into protracted battles over logo design (there are 20 versions of the True Blue logo on Franklin’s computer) and when it is appropriate to use the word poignant (Graham believes it only works in poems and emotional ballads, but Franklin insists that something can be intellectually moving).

Before graduating from CHA in June, Franklin and Graham put their painstaking perfectionism into full gear to find their editorial successors and make sure that their beloved publications would remain in excellent shape for years to come.

Sam Bissell and Harrison Simms will run True Blue and the school newspaper, The Campus Lantern. Martin Schardt and Julian Day-Cooney will join Bissell at the helm of the literary magazine, The Wissahickon.

“Christian and I made sure that leading into the final weeks of school they were prepared,” Franklin said. “All of them are motivated to take it on and surpass us.”

In the fall, Franklin and Graham will attend the University of Pennsylvania together — Franklin for political science, Graham for communications, both with $2,500 in scholarship money from the Comcast Foundation in honor of their excellence in communication.

They are not sure if they’ll pursue journalism as a career, but both are considering writing for the Daily Pennsylvanian and both are committed to defending the written word in an age when text messaging threatens to reduce the English language to Orwellian newspeak.