In a shocking twist for worldwide fans of university journalism, The Brock Press has officially declared war on BrockTV, the video-centric student-run organization with an office next door to ours.
The war was officially declared on April 1 by The Brock Press’ Managing Editor Christian Roethling, who said in a statement that “enough is enough” and that BrockTV must “pay for their transgressions.”
The idea to declare war was conceived out of boredom after Roethling finished his 27th Pokémon-themed article of the year.
“I was looking for a change,” said Roethling in a private interview. “Stirring up pointless controversy seemed like a good idea, and things just got going from there.”
The reasons behind the war aren’t entirely clear, but in his speech to The Brock Press workers, Roethling mumbled some nonsense about “eliminating student-led media competition” and stated he “thought this would make a fun icebreaker” for the team.
In his speech, he also stated that “BrockTV hasn’t even made one actual TV show. What’s up with that?”
When pressed for comment, an anonymous executive at BrockTV had no idea what we were talking about and stated he had never heard of The Brock Press.
“I think the idea of ‘declaring war’ on a fellow student-run organization is ridiculous, frankly,” said the executive. “For the last time, I have no idea who you guys are. Now please get out of my office.”
Upon learning of the executive’s dismissive comments, Roethling left in a rage, saying he needed time to plan out his “course of action.” No less than 30 minutes later, he could be seen through the office window speedrunning Super Monkey Ball on his Nintendo Switch.
“I didn’t go through four years of journalism school to be treated like a joke,” said Roethling after his three-hour gaming session. It should be noted that he has not, in fact, had any sort of formal education in journalism.
The Brock Press’ Editor-in-Chief Haytham Nawaz expressed frustration upon hearing of Roethling’s actions.
“That guy is honestly very annoying,” said Nawaz. “We technically fired him last year, but he keeps showing up at the office and submitting articles anyway. We won’t turn down the free content, but I do wish he’d at least write about more mature topics than video games.”
“Maybe he could write something about the way debt peonage ostensibly conflicts with the primary effects of the onset of the neoliberal era, which is disheartening considering the coagulation of the private market in a society fundamentally dominated by widespread financialization,” added Nawaz. “Let’s begin by discussing the general degradation of developed Western countries’ tax bases, and the concurrent axing of top marginal tax rates for individuals and corporations in the ‘70s…”
Nawaz continued on his increasingly frustrated economical rant for 45 minutes, but unfortunately, we couldn’t understand a word he was saying.
The declaration of war also creates an interesting dynamic for The Brock Press’ Copy Editor, Andrew Hawlitzky.
Hawlitzky has co-written several articles with Roethling under their world-renowned column “The Game Boys,” where the duo debates topics related to Nintendo. The writers currently have plenty of articles planned for this series, including “Which Nintendo game is most emasculating to play in public?”, “Do Animal Crossing villagers go to Heaven?” and “Smash or Pass: Waluigi.”
However, the war with BrockTV has put the series on hiatus and has caused the duo to temporarily rebrand as “The War Boys.”
“Yeah, it’s a pretty surprising turn of events, but I’m here for it,” said Hawlitzky. “Right now we’re working on a bunch of articles for The War Boys series, which should help liven things up. I also helped Christian edit his manifesto, and let me tell you, it was a slog to get through… but after some extensive rewrites and two weeks of procrastinating, you can expect it pretty soon.”
“It’s going to be exciting – and considering it’s been such a controversy-free year for The Brock Press, excitement is something we could always use a bit more of,” said Hawlitzky with a nervous chuckle.
The Brock Press managed to obtain an early draft of Roethling’s manifesto, which has a list of demands more in line with a Christmas wish list than any sort of formal document.
“This war won’t end until you fulfil my demands,” says the manifesto, which was written with a burgundy pencil crayon. “I want a copy of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, an iPad Pro with a terabyte of storage, and I want you to change your company name to BrockYouTube since you don’t make any actual TV shows.”
“Oh, and I want to be the next Brock Bachelor,” the manifesto adds. “That’d be pretty dope. Thanks in advance.”
Recently, Roethling launched his first full-scale attack on BrockTV, which involved leaving a whoopee cushion on a random chair in the BrockTV office. Immediately after deploying the weapon, he could be seen running out of the enemy office while profusely giggling.
“They’ll never see it coming,” said Roethling. “And rest assured, there’s more where that came from.”
As of writing, the war is waging on and has created a gruesome battle between the two formerly friendly businesses – even if no one at either company is aware it’s happening at all.
This article is part of a special edition of The Brock Press for April Fools and is completely satirical. None of the content contained within this article is meant to be representative of reality and all of the quotes are fabricated.