This just in: life lessons on ‘The Paper’

On FIRST blush, MTV’s “The Paper” (10:30 p.m. Mondays) is a sort of penance. It airs directly after “The Hills,” the semi-scripted docu-soap that has become the network’s defining show, thanks to its stars’ insidious infiltration into the world of actual celebrity. “The Hills” may air for only a half hour each week, but in the way of TMZ, parental love and running water, it is always on.

By comparison, “The Paper” should be a palate cleanser. Outside of the do-good thicket of Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel and Saturday morning TV, what other show in television advocates being dutiful in school? For all their quibbling and cliquishness, the students on “The Paper” -- an eight-part documentary series featuring the staff of the Circuit, the newspaper of Cypress Bay High School in Weston, Fla. -- are all chasing the same goal: a worthy school newspaper.

The cool kids needn’t worry, though, as “The Paper” does its part to reinforce the pecking order. Its ostensible hero is Amanda Lorber, the new editor in chief, who is bright, ambitious and not a little awkward. A teen eccentric -- she wears bold prints, has a range of arty eyeglasses and a Regina Spektor ringtone -- Amanda is of the type usually adored by teachers and scorned by peers.

But “The Paper” builds Amanda up only to dismantle her. Her ascension to editor in chief is less an opportunity to celebrate her difference than to watch her peers attempt to tear her down. In each of the first three episodes, Amanda stayed at home while her fellow staffers partied away. They viciously demean her behind her back, and sometimes to her face, about everything from her management style to her nose job. (In this way, she is reminiscent of Brianne, a contestant on the 2005 MTV reality competition “Miss Seventeen,” who similarly alienated her peers in a quest for journalistic greatness.)

Amanda certainly has her own mean-girl tendencies. “Of course people dress nice for the first day of school,” she says at one of the first staff meetings. “Except for Giana -- she just throws on clothes.” Amanda may be lashing out -- Giana is one of her key antagonists -- or she may be oblivious. “You give off the impression that you’re better than everyone else,” Giana tells her in the first episode. “No one thinks you’ll treat them like your equal.”

The browbeating eventually wears down Amanda’s sense of entitlement. By the end of this week’s episode, she’s practically a mute, ceding her authority while those around her who are louder solve the paper’s problems. Maybe she is being set up for a grand redemption, but this certainly looks a lot like bullying.

Unlike the rest of MTV’s real-life programming, from “The Hills” to “The Real World,” “The Paper” manages to milk humor from its persistent tension. Amanda’s lack of self-consciousness is played for gentle laughs -- she talks to her dog, sings at random moments, and picks out her outfits for a week in a row, marking them with sticky notes. The stiffly shot scene of her running on a treadmill that opened the second episode was a neat comic collision of the formal and the loose. (“The Paper” forgoes the contrived naturalism of “The Hills” for a crisper style.) And in the first episode, when Amanda basked in the glory of her new position, the Linda Eder version of “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” from “Funny Girl,” played over the scene.

When “The Paper” focuses on other staff members, though, it suffers -- few are as certain of themselves as Amanda or as theatrical. Griping requires little emotional range. And what’s more, the making of a newspaper doesn’t necessarily make for great television -- note Bravo’s short-lived “Tabloid Wars,” whose best moments took place far outside the newsroom, or the recent, dull PBS “Independent Lens” documentary, also called “The Paper,” about the Penn State newspaper.

Wisely, “The Paper,” for all its noble intentions, doesn’t bother much with journalism -- the first actual issue of the Circuit doesn’t arrive until next week, in the series’ fifth episode.

It’s possible, though, that Amanda is missing her calling -- running the paper doesn’t appear to be her strong suit, but in front of the camera, she’s as natural a character as “The Hills’ ” Lauren or Heidi. Maybe that’s what everyone’s so mad about.