I may have written quite some articles for the student periodical in my university days, but here's me letting you in on a secret: almost all of them were filler stories like mentioned in the previous reshare by @Jason Lefkowitz. Though I didn't know the term 'bus plunge story'.

Our periodical needed to be a multiple of four pages, due to how it was printed. And even though it was laid out on the computer (wordperfect, but then laser printed and the pictures glued in by hand), there was only so much whitespace you could remove and articles you could shorten. At some point you realised you were still half a page over and you were just going to have to add content to make it to the next multiple of four.

I wrote so many totally pointless articles, quickly, after the deadline, but before the printer offices closed...