On Friday, Plaid staff channeled their inner Carl Icahn and launched a hostile takeover of Voices, Winchester’s student newspaper of 50 years. The literary magazine managed this feat by individually meeting with each of Voices’ seventeen shareholders and convincing twelve of them to give up their shares. One such traitor, Dr. Naragon, had been looking for such an opportunity.

“I’ve actually been looking to unload my shares for a while, but I couldn’t find anyone to buy them,” he said. “When I bought in, I hadn’t entirely realized that there wasn’t a huge market in case I wanted to sell. Frankly, if I didn’t get out now, I don’t know if there would’ve been another chance.”

Madame Ekeberg received expert consulting before ultimately giving up on Winchester’s storied institution.

“Well, I was skeptical when I was initially approached by some Plaid kids speaking in iambic pentameter. I really wanted to believe that Voices stock was worth holding onto, but when I asked my husband, who teaches journalism, to look at the site, he told me there was no upside to the paper and that I should sell at whatever price they named. He advised that having teenage editors and zero revenue streams were both huge red flags.”

Mr. Nassar had a much simpler explanation for his decision to sell.

“Every day, Ben and Daniel walk into the CS office screaming like madmen about the latest problem Voices is having. The first month or so, I figured the transition would have a couple hiccups and this was just that, but they’re still coming in every single day. It’s like, I’m not even sure some of their writers can spell words corektly. Those Plaid people were a blessing.”

Ian Frank ‘20, who had invested when Voices first went public, held the line until the buyout.

“To be clear, I didn’t believe in Voices either. I want it to be known I had absolutely no faith in the Voices leadership. I was just as if not more excited than other shareholders to sell my stake,” the alumnus said. “The problem was, I thought we would all silently conspire to make them sweeten their offer, and too many people caved. I guess I should have said something in the groupchat.”

Mr. Frank showed his phone, displaying an 82-week-inactive group chat named “Voices Board of Directors.” The last message, coming from Señor, read, “This was such a waste of money lol.”

The mock trial team, which was supposed to act as the newspaper’s lawyers, failed to maneuver Voices out of trouble. Observing students say mock kids’ tendency to spend time scrolling memes on Instagram and rewriting their statements contributed to a lack of agility. While they defended well, an underwhelming attack sunk Voices’ chance of tidy survival.

Spiralling further, the Investment Club was unwilling to financially intervene for Voices’ protection. Otto Graham, Investment’s Head of Risk Management, did not believe the fund could take on such a stock.

“I know a lot of the board members read Voices, but honestly, I don’t think the purchase would be compatible with our fiduciary responsibility to current and future board members,” he said. “If Voices were a penny stock with a beta over 2 and a p/e over 1000, maybe a deal could’ve gotten done, but not like this. We’d be throwing money away.”

The final defense, the Desi Student Union, elected not to fundraise to save the newspaper. DSU High Councilperson Rishi Mukherjee explained that becoming a majority owner didn’t fit with the student union’s other charitable works.
“Voices was certainly in dire straits, really unlike no other organization we had considered before,” he explained. “But we would be trusting them to address problems they had created. We didn’t have the faith to make a committment that large. Ultimately, we chose a different organization because getting food for the hungry was more important than making sure Winchester kids could try their hand at satire.”

In total, Plaid acquired the newspaper for 24 pizza days and a 10 big cookies, with the option to exercise a swap on the big cookies for 15 more pizza days if the big cookies were overbaked. 

Accordingly, this will be Voices’ last prose work, as what shall follow will consist only of sentence fragments and unusual line breaks. Voices appreciates your readership these past couple months.