In my opinion last weeks paper was pretty good. I am proud of myself and my staff of very hardworking young ladies. We put in some long hours to produce a great first issue.
What I am a little peeved about is how the student body seems to take the DIGEST for granted. My peers don’t know what it means to be in the office until the wee hours of the morning.
The editors (Brandi Jade, Gary Holloway, Janene Tate and myself) came into the office 2 PM Wednesday afternoon, we left 6 AM Thursday morning. As the McDonalds’ delivery truck was pulling up, I was just making it back to Totty Hall. That’s 16 hours of staring into a computer screen, typing and retyping.
After I took a long nap, with the ringer on my phone off, I woke up, turned on the ringer and checked all of my ten messages. Ten messages that said the same thing, “Where were you?” I returned my calls and my explanation of why I wasn’t in my room at two in the morning, was met with the same thing every time, “What could have possibly taken so long?”
Students read the paper; they just see the paper. They don’t see the time put into laying out each article, and adding a picture. They don’t see how hard we work to get everything just right. The editors have to make sure we catch every error we can and then take and pick the paper up from the printers.
Already, I have accounted for 16 hours of editing and layout. But, what about the time and effort spent getting the story? You have people who cannot be found, people who don’t call you back, don’t show up for interviews or they make you wait.
I have had to trudge through a foot of mud to get to the cross-country team, I call Sports Information three or four times before I get what I need.
One of my writers had to wade through ankle high water to get information vital to her story. All this to bring you, my readers the new.
But, I cannot complain, in fact I don’t think I would trade this experience for anything in the world.