“Goggling” in the Wrong Direction?

Dear Teen Ink,

As an eighth grader, I love reading the Teen Ink articles and reviews. They make me happy, they’re a great pass-time, and they’re funny. If I’m going to continue to enjoy reading, you absolutely have to do better. Even though Teen Ink is the greatest magazine on the planet, you guys have dropped the ball lately. I don’t think it’s very professional of you to publish plagiarized work, allow trashy reviews to be published, and to misspell a lot. You’ve really got to redeem yourself!

Recently I’ve noticed that plagiarized articles and poems are being featured. Do you expect to appeal to a wider demographic if you use someone’s work that isn’t his or her own? In your April issue, there was a section on the Feedback page that was titled, “Corrections” that consisted of your long overdue apology for publishing the plagiarized poem, “God Says Yes to Me” in the March issue. This is such a disappointment, Teen Ink.

Furthermore, you have published trashy, disgusting, and unnecessarily rude reviews to fill your pages. Having rude opinions throughout your magazines will give you a bad reputation. You don’t want that, do you? In your April issue, you published a review on One Direction’s new album, Take Me Home. The author said, and I quote, “’Take Me Home”? More like Throw Me Out.” It included other insights such as, “It doesn’t live up to ‘Up All Night’”, “The rhythm is unsophisticated”, and “It’s a disappointment.” The band mates aren’t as bad as the author perceives them to be. The boys recently took a trip to Ghana, Africa to help with a campaign to donate money to get medicine to cure children with malaria and other diseases. This showed me that they have hearts, and they aren’t just stuck-up celebrities. Maybe you could dedicate at least one column about 1D’s humanitarian efforts, considering you’ve already published a full-page article about Justin Bieber?

Finally, your occasional spelling errors make it hard to enjoy reading. In your April issue, you published an article titled, “Goggle and Me: Together Forever.” This article was supposed to be about the search engine, Google. Why does the title say “Goggle”? If you want to keep you many teenage readers, please consider hiring people like me to proof your copy! Being 14 years old, I tend to misspell a lot. If I were writing in a magazine, I would make sure I spelled everything right. Especially the title. With more input from students like me, Teen Ink can continue to move in the right direction!

Thank you for your time!