March 24, 2006

One day at MC... in the newsroom

By AMY BITELY
arb001@marietta.edu

Wednesday--tension runs high. The newsroom is full of editors, all of them fighting for a computer; when one stands up, another leaps into the vacant chair without a word of apology. Articles aren’t in; pictures aren’t in; editors aren’t in, and their pages aren’t done, and the deadline is mere hours away. Cell phones come out so that their owners can interrogate the slackers. Obscene language too vulgar for Howard Stern fills the air as the computers freeze in unison.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the press office of the Marcolian. Or as sports editor Jon Moffett so eloquently puts it, “Welcome to Hell.”

Meet copyeditor Mattie Unger. She’s looking at the sports page, checking it for grammar and spelling errors that the spellcheck can’t penetrate. “I found the word ‘committee’ spelled ‘commity’ a couple of issues ago,” she tells me--more of a tragedy than a commity, if you ask me.

Jessie Schmac, news editor, discovers at 12:30 that we don’t have movie reviews. Or, in fact, an arts section. She curses under her breath. “Where’s Paul?” she demands, and pulls out her cell phone. “I’ll deal with the roaming charges later,” she mutters, just before editor in chief Paul Rutter picks up the phone. They negotiate to fill the blank space while Paul’s at lunch.

Viewpoints is missing almost a full page of content. I beg Schmac to take one of my pages for news even as she tries to find material for the arts page. No sign of arts editor Jason Weber, and only four hours until deadline.

A geology lab intervenes in our pressroom crisis, but when I return, the situation hasn’t improved. “Do you all realize it’s a quarter to three, and our Greek page and our arts pages are empty?” Schmac asks the room. Sports editor Jon Moffett thinks about artistic things he can do with his page, but at least he assures me that he has his viewpoints article in.

At three o’clock, Weber and Rutter come in and immediately take command posts. Rutter and Moffett share a computer because we don’t have enough; the seat-hopping hasn’t started yet, but Unger keeps a running count of curses. Rutter breaks his Lent resolution against cursing for the fifth time since Lent began.

The editors try to discuss positive thinking. They say that they try to wake up every day and think, “Wow, it’s a good day.” Right now, though, the thought is “should I even keep going?”

The newsroom hasn’t seen any suicides yet, but perhaps it’s only a matter of time. The curses and complaints are all in good humor, but there’s an undercurrent of tension beneath it.
Silence reigns, except for the frantic click of keys as we try to fill space. I still have half a page of blank space waiting to be filled, and when I get up to take a photo for an article, Unger takes my seat--as soon as she moves, I pounce, typing like mad. My page fills faster than the still-blank Greek Life page; Rutter leaves a message on Loren Genson’s cell phone, informing her tersely that her page “is looking pretty sparse.”

It’s 4:30pm. We have half an hour.

“What are we doing with the Greek page?” I ask Rutter at 4:55.
“Crying,” he answers.

It’s always a rough ride, when we’re down to the last few minutes and everything isn’t finished yet. Everyone gets kind of quiet, as though we’re afraid to waste what time we have left by cursing and harassing each other. Some parts of the paper are beautiful and fit together seamlessly, while others are never going to look right, no matter how much we try.
And when time runs out, it’s finished.

You hold the final product of our curses, our tears, and our frantic efforts in your hands.