Saturday, September 17, 2005
WEEK 4
I'm back. Last week I couldn't remember my login name for this site. After trying fuitlessly for 20 minutes, I gave up and decided to try again later. I didn't mean to wait an entire week, but oh well, here I am.
The Spokesman staff successfully delivered Issue #1, Volume 42 on Friday. I think it was a success. Now, if you had asked me last Monday, the fear in my voice would have been a dead give-away to my lack of confidence.
When I left school last Friday, templates were not working correctly, stories were still not on pages, the stories that were on pages were not fitting correctly; it was scary. Then I complicated things by catching a nasty sinus cold on Sunday, which rendered me useless on Monday as I lay on my couch blowing the snot from my nose at a rate of about 10 times an hour. Not pretty.
The amazing staff pulled through under good leadership though. On Monday, I only received one phone call, from Jon, because the printer called fairly upset since he did not know what was going on with the color and Jon couldn't help him. The color issue is a topic for a post of its own, so I will not digress here. By the time I returned on Tuesday, for the final deadline, Jake, Jon and Tara had things under control.
La Voz was having lots of problems with missing stories since one of its writers quit the week before. Jake took them under his wing and guided them through the excrutiating process of filling space when there are no words. Although it was the last page finished (at 12:30 a.m.), it had the best use of design elements of any page in the issue.
Jon used his anger constructively throughout pasteup to urge editors to finish pages and staffers to stop screwing around. There really wasn't much he could do to overcome the yearbook scooter distraction though. I think Andy, Nick, Karolina and some other staff members managed to put a few miles on the scooter before I finally decreed that it be put away at 11 p.m.
The end result of the hard work: 12 pages of some very good writing, including a great story about where the textbooks go when the school doesn't use them anymore, and some very bad writing, like stories with one source or no good quotations. We also made some headway on our goal of no pictures of people sitting a desk/table with a tilted head due to talking or writing (only 3 this issue). The 3 head-tilt photos were offset by some great action shots including the front page photo of NJROTC members collecting items for Hurricane Katrina victims.
Personally, I feel I have turned a new leaf as an adviser. I only lost my temper once. It was circulation day. I had been up until 12:30a.m. on Tuesday night so the staff could finish paste-up; I had been up until 11 p.m. on Wednesday because of grad class; my nose was still running. All I had wanted was to walk in to the room and see the circulation manager managing the circulation effort as we had discussed the day before. Instead, I found 10 staff members aimlessly walking around the room or reading copies of the paper and no circulation manager in sight. She had left, the staff members told me. That was the end of my sleep-deprived patience. Thirty seconds later the staff had stacks of newspapers in front of them while they dutifully counted out smallers piles to deliver the next day, and the circulation manager had returned from her trip to the vending machines for a bottle of water. I think we made it through just fine.
The feedback: unfortunately not too much yet. The most I was able to shake out of people was that they liked the Hookah Bar story in A&E and the Clash column about whether student blogs can be used to get the writers' in trouble.
Now it's on to the next issue. Story ideas were assigned much more smoothly this time around. The photography department has also improved its organization after a meeting with the EICs. Hopefully we'll learn from our mistakes and put out some full color when issue #2 is released Oct. 7.
The Spokesman staff successfully delivered Issue #1, Volume 42 on Friday. I think it was a success. Now, if you had asked me last Monday, the fear in my voice would have been a dead give-away to my lack of confidence.
When I left school last Friday, templates were not working correctly, stories were still not on pages, the stories that were on pages were not fitting correctly; it was scary. Then I complicated things by catching a nasty sinus cold on Sunday, which rendered me useless on Monday as I lay on my couch blowing the snot from my nose at a rate of about 10 times an hour. Not pretty.
The amazing staff pulled through under good leadership though. On Monday, I only received one phone call, from Jon, because the printer called fairly upset since he did not know what was going on with the color and Jon couldn't help him. The color issue is a topic for a post of its own, so I will not digress here. By the time I returned on Tuesday, for the final deadline, Jake, Jon and Tara had things under control.
La Voz was having lots of problems with missing stories since one of its writers quit the week before. Jake took them under his wing and guided them through the excrutiating process of filling space when there are no words. Although it was the last page finished (at 12:30 a.m.), it had the best use of design elements of any page in the issue.
Jon used his anger constructively throughout pasteup to urge editors to finish pages and staffers to stop screwing around. There really wasn't much he could do to overcome the yearbook scooter distraction though. I think Andy, Nick, Karolina and some other staff members managed to put a few miles on the scooter before I finally decreed that it be put away at 11 p.m.
The end result of the hard work: 12 pages of some very good writing, including a great story about where the textbooks go when the school doesn't use them anymore, and some very bad writing, like stories with one source or no good quotations. We also made some headway on our goal of no pictures of people sitting a desk/table with a tilted head due to talking or writing (only 3 this issue). The 3 head-tilt photos were offset by some great action shots including the front page photo of NJROTC members collecting items for Hurricane Katrina victims.
Personally, I feel I have turned a new leaf as an adviser. I only lost my temper once. It was circulation day. I had been up until 12:30a.m. on Tuesday night so the staff could finish paste-up; I had been up until 11 p.m. on Wednesday because of grad class; my nose was still running. All I had wanted was to walk in to the room and see the circulation manager managing the circulation effort as we had discussed the day before. Instead, I found 10 staff members aimlessly walking around the room or reading copies of the paper and no circulation manager in sight. She had left, the staff members told me. That was the end of my sleep-deprived patience. Thirty seconds later the staff had stacks of newspapers in front of them while they dutifully counted out smallers piles to deliver the next day, and the circulation manager had returned from her trip to the vending machines for a bottle of water. I think we made it through just fine.
The feedback: unfortunately not too much yet. The most I was able to shake out of people was that they liked the Hookah Bar story in A&E and the Clash column about whether student blogs can be used to get the writers' in trouble.
Now it's on to the next issue. Story ideas were assigned much more smoothly this time around. The photography department has also improved its organization after a meeting with the EICs. Hopefully we'll learn from our mistakes and put out some full color when issue #2 is released Oct. 7.
