Another wonderful production day! There were many of the normal stresses and complications that go along with the production process today, but overall everything went pretty smoothly. The morning began with six stories ready to be edited; however, the sports section was given a full page color add, so I was forced to make some cuts. For Thursday’s edition, the sports section will run a preview of the PSU football, volleyball, and women’s soccer games this weekend. We also ran an article updating the NBA lockout situation as well as a small update on the softball team’s fall campaign. Basically, we only published a part of the softball article written by Alex Moore, while the full article will be available online. Unfortunately, I had to cut the cross country preview, but we’ve given a large amount of coverage to the two teams already, so it was the logical choice…I think. Cutting content is never fun and can sometimes be quite a difficult decision.
It’s been a long day. I’m nearly done with the sport section’s pages and it’s just after 8 p.m. I started the morning at about 8 a.m. and barely managed five hours of sleep. I came into the newsroom to find Erick Bengel, our Arts & Culture editor, sleeping on the couch. This isn’t all that uncommon, as a writer or editor may spend a late night working in the office, either writing an article or doing homework, and then simply pass out from exhaustion on one of our poorly conditioned couches. During moments of down time at the newsroom, writers and editors often lounge around on the circle of rapidly deteriorating furniture, and watch a movie or play Nintendo on our television, which is missing, among other things, an “on” button. In order to watch the television you must use a pencil or another long, skinny probing instrument and shove it down the hole where the “on” button used to exist (we affectionately refer to it as “the spot”). This usually works. Still, it’s just nice to have an area to relax regardless of the level of luxury.
While I was waiting for production to put together the pages this evening, I spent some time reorganizing my own personal office space. Even though I’ve been the sports editor since last spring, my main focus has been on trying to do my job well, so I haven’t taken any time to actually decorate or personalize my little corner cubicle. Along the walls of the cubicle are papers, pictures, old articles, and other junk…some of which has been hanging on display for over 3 years. I found a contact list for sports writers that was from 2008. After recycling a huge pile of stuff, my walls are now hauntingly bare. What should I hang on my walls? Sports posters? Comic strips? Racy photos? Perhaps for my next blog entry I’ll give an update.
