6.08.2007

Both a bad day and a good day.

Alrighty, so today was half crappy and half good.

For the first part of the day, I felt very frustrated, and then I felt like crying because this copy editor (yeah, yeah, same guy I've been complaining about since day one) challenged my ability to juggle my workload and meet deadlines.

I know I shouldn't have taken it personally, but it hurt. My plan was to go and mope about it during my lunch break, but that didn't happen because I never took my lunch break.

Go on and say it now - "Jessica, why the hell didn't you take your lunch break?"

Well, so I could get everything done. This morning, I did birth announcements. Then I got an e-mail from said copy editor telling me that I had to redo In The Classroom because I didn't have enough info for it. But first, I had to get a hold of someone from Cox Communications for a brief. Then I had to scramble for education news briefs and education stuff in general for the Summerlin editions, which is a pain, because one, there aren't that many schools in Summerlin to begin with, and two, summer vacation started yesterday.

This took up the entire morning and into the afternoon.

When I finished that, I had to do the blotter for three different areas in town. Finding the info was easy, formatting it was not. It was icky to figure out exactly how everything should be. And then my computer starts being a pain in the ass by giving me the little rainbow thingy that means it's processing slowly. So I had to restart the computer.

Then once the blotter was done (it's now 3:30 p.m.), I had to work on the Boulder City graduation story. That turned out to be crappy as well, because it turns out whoever sent me the fax forgot the last three or four pages of the program, thus making it impossible for me to finish said story.

Then my editor asked me to count all of the ad space in the newspapers. Each newspaper. 8 newspapers and all of their ad space. Seriously.

And that is where I am left at now.

So what could have possibly made this a good day?

Well, first off, I got a very nice and encouraging text message from Rachel, who saw the thing about me wanting to cry. It made me feel a lot better after dealing with the copy editor.

Next, I pitched a story idea about education job trends in the valley, and tying it in with this job fair going on in a couple weeks. Editor liked the idea, it's now on my budget.

I also got this really cool story assignment about Shelley Berkley and this resolution the House passed about women's suffrage that was started by a couple of kids here in Vegas. I think that'll be a good historical and personal lesson for me.

And finally, I got this phone call from a reader who saw my manga article in the paper. She wanted to ask me more questions about it because she felt very interested after reading it and wanted to send her niece to the event because she (the niece) is an aspiring artist. She then said it was nicely written, and asked how long I had been a reporter.

It just kinda goes back to how people really are out there reading your stories that you thought were insignificant and Mike saying how they do appreciate what you do, you just don't hear from them all that often (see "Quote of the Day").

Anyway, I haven't eaten in 12 hours and I have to set up an Excel worksheet before I head home for my "ad space counting" project. So I'm off.

1 comment:

MikeMan said...

Join the crowd. I don't eat much anymore, my stomach has actually shrunk and I can't even eat a regular meal at Long John Silvers without feeling sick.

It's a combination of waking up at 1pm and going to bed at 3am and also not having time for a lunch break. When I do have time, I have to make it quick and generally end up at White Castle because it's across the street.

That's really exciting that someone called you, that must have felt really good.

It looks like all of us are doing a lot of different work but it's pretty exciting stuff.

BTW, thanks for making me the quote of the day. That's something I've learned while I'm here: the public knows quite a bit about their newspaper and that's what led me to the conclusion that people care.

It makes sense when you think about it.