Gwen Ruff lives in Gibbon and works at the GFW elementary school. She was a reporter and editor at The Journal in the early 1980s and writes this column when Randy Krzmarzick is busy farming.

This is my first column in the new post-factual era. Pretty exciting seeing as I recently won a Pulitzer for a series on taco bowls vs. nachos as the quintessential Cinco de Mayo entree.

Speaking of food, I’ve changed my diet to include more trips to McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried because french fries and crispy chicken are delicious and have nothing to do with the size of my rear end.

Been very, very busy. Women’s March in St. Paul in January. Asked to give speech, and I looked out, the field was — it looked like a billion, billion and a half people. I got the biggest standing ovation since that guy won the Super Bowl, and, of course, that big, fat check for being a paid agitator.

Teaching kids’ art classes. Guy from Louvre saw my work. Better than Monet and Picasso put together. Style is the likes of which the world has never seen before. Major exhibit coming.

Lot of projects at my house because it’s really old, but with world-class craftsmanship. It’s a world-class house. Built for Queen Elizabeth II, which explains why my doorbell plays “God Save the Queen.” Going to employ a lot of people on the fix-ups. A lot of jobs, OK.

Making the beautiful fence around my backyard higher. Some very bad hombres and hombrettes coming in. New little girl down the street riding bike without a helmet.

Working to shut down animal rescue group. They’ve taken in tens of thousands. We know nothing about them. They say they’ve been to a vet, but we don’t know. They could have rabies, distemper, mange, ticks, doggy breath. Very bad!

Rainy weather delayed mowing lawn. Very long, but we will get it done. It will be bigger, I believe, than any grass cut ever. Maybe the biggest grass cut we’ve ever had.

Heading up commission to study why bright ball of light is out there longer each day. Global lightening. Very bad!

Asked to perform nose job on neighbor after so-called doctor said it wasn’t needed. Close one. Who knew surgery would be so complicated?

One thing I didn’t waste any time on was doing taxes. Sent in a note to IRS: “I’m too smart to pay taxes.” So zero. Zippo.

So-called principal at school told me the other day: You will be the greatest substitute teacher. She said you will be, in front of five, six people, the greatest sub in the history of this school district. That’s what she said. I mean, what can I tell you?

Too bad no one told the failing newspaper at the high school. Its list of the 100 Most Influential GFW Teachers is a joke. I realized it had no credibility when I didn’t make the list last year. Very dishonest people! Fake news! Bad list!

Gibbon totally losing pizza trade war with Fairfax. Jimmy’s Pizza boxes blowing around town way outnumber those from Gibbon convenience store. Robbing us blind in pizza deficits and stealing our jobs. Sad!

Terrible! Just found out that Gregg Ingdoll rigged my high school homecoming queen election to favor Leslie Rogan. You have students that are registered who are dead. You have kids registered in two homeroom classes. They vote twice. Thousands were bussed across state lines to vote. There are millions of votes, in my opinion. Election was rigged. How low has Gregg gone to sabotage that very sacred teenage election? Always knew he was a bad (or sick) guy!

Summer will be the best ever in the history of the world. Playing pro baseball. We will win so much. I was always the best athlete. Nobody knew this about me. I was the best baseball player in the state. The best. The best hitter. But I was good in other sports, too. Wrestling. So good at football. I was always the best at sports.

Planning vacation to Montreal. Always wanted to go there. Kind of worried it’ll be too hot though, being that the equator runs right through there.

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OK. I can’t do this any more. I thought bloviating on a bunch of made-up stuff would be fun and easy. It sure was way faster than usual to write this column. Usually, I have to take the time to look up facts to make sure I’m not getting anything wrong.

But I have a journalism degree, so just writing nonsense about anything that flits through my head is actually kind of worrying. I took out a couple fake news items because I thought, “What if someone believes it?” It’s a big responsibility to put something out in public that could affect people’s decisions, their families, their livelihoods and maybe even their lives.

All of the reporters and editors I worked with took that responsibility seriously. We believed we were doing important jobs. We believed there were facts we could discover, report and correct. We believed in and worked to adhere to the ethics of the profession: “Seek truth and report it. Verify information. Provide context. Gather and correct information throughout the life of a news story. Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable. Give voice to the voiceless.”

Of course, we realized we had biases in how each of us thought about things and we made mistakes, but I never knew any colleague who was overtly dishonest and made up stories. So, I still believe that facts matter, whether it’s the New York Times or the New Ulm Journal. I still believe that real journalism matters: real journalism with reporters and editors who can double-check the facts, ask for clarification and challenge conclusions.

Since November, I’ve watched national journalists say this is a crazy time for America, with each day presenting a multitude of stories to dig into. They seem to be working nonstop, and I’ve got to believe that they wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.