Was that the real reason they shut down the streets? The Great Paperboy in the Sky clocked unsuspecting NoHum passers-by straight in the dome with not one, not two, but three great issues yesterday, and it was so awesome and incredible that it just needs to commented upon.

First up you got the debut edition of the Mad River Union, that bastard beast offspring of the Arcata Eye and the McKinleyville Press (R.I.P.). The Union launches with stories on McKinleyville residents in fear of a house grower exodus from Arcata, a complete retrospective on the Arcata’s bay-changing McDaniel Slough project, a new residential/commercial/industrial development on the banks of the Mad River, and the first in a series of profiles of candidates for the board of the Northern Humboldt Union High School District.

All that and — apparently — a big multimedia push, with video reports from two breaking news stories yesterday. Mazel tov, Union! Facebook ‘em up right here.

Next door on the news rack was this year’s first edition of Arcata High’s Pepperbox, one of the best high-school newspapers in the U.S. of A. The 2013-14 Pepperbox kicks off with multiple features on the Dan Johnson controversy from an exhaustive number of angles. Ever wonder what Dan Johnson and Katy Perry have in common? Wonder no more.

Then you’ve got your profiles of new teachers, new office staff and new students, including an exchange student from Jordan who talks about the civil war happening across the border from his hometown. Man-on-the-street interview excerpt:

Q: What’s the first word you think of when I say “United States”?

Robin Bonn, German exchange student: ‘Murica.

Funnest read of the week. The kids are all right. Here’s the Pepperbox website, where you can get full issues in glorious electronic page-flippy format, and here is its Facebook page.

Finally, some great reporting left HSU’s Lumberjack in a brief but very tense standoff with school administration yesterday. It involved a football-player-involved melee on homecoming night, an angry parent, a press run held hostage and — for a time — some lawyers. But because the Lumberjack staff is filled with kickass reporters, they resolved the situation with kickass reporting and almost everyone walked away from the showdown peaceably and amicably.

Full disclosure: This correspondent is serving as the Lumberjack’s faculty adviser this semester, so we’ll let the students tell the tale. Here’s L-Jack staffer Eli Rohl talking with KHUM’s Larry Trask yesterday:

Rohl

Your Lost Coast Outpost could not be more proud of the little rats who will soon be infesting professional media outlets across the globe. There’ll be more on this in next week’s Lumberjack, I presume. Find their website here and Facebook them to death over here.