Once upon a time, like two weeks ago, we were busy putting the finishing touches on our Saturday edition.
Deadline days at the News are wild and crazy — it’s not just putting stories on a page, but making space for last minute ads, copy editing and trying to squeeze late submissions onto already filled pages. It’s waiting for sources to get back to you and wondering if that latest scanner report is going to turn into something big.
We all look at pages numerous times before they are sent to press, but of course, being a limited staff, mistakes do slip through sometimes. I’ve learned that the public has varying degrees of acceptance on that front and to be okay with the fact that I’m not perfect.
I’m great, but not that great is what I’m trying to say here.
Anyway, it just so happens that my computer is also not perfect. Like, not even close. For reasons no one is able to explain, my computer is a very high-maintenance kind of machine. We work with a program called InCopy, a rather ingenious setup that allows the entire newsroom to see page production as it happens in real time. I can tell when Emily makes an edit or when Minna, our composer with Eagle Media Lab in Salem, adds a story to the page. Working with the same program means we are all updated at the same time.
Except when we’re not.
Sometimes, my computer has troubles syncing, so everyone else will be updated except for me. Sometimes, I lose my entire library of fonts, which makes the version I see on screen look really funky.
And sometimes — apparently — what I see on my end is not seen by anyone else.
Case in point, this particular deadline: I had written a story and, rereading it for the eighth time, I (finally) noticed that a Sunday date was labeled as Saturday. I do this sometimes with numbers. Not awesome. I was so relieved to have caught the error — disaster averted! I corrected it and started to proof another page.
I didn’t think much of it when Minna asked if I’d load an A6 cutline … that I’d already loaded. I could see it just fine on my end, but it wasn’t showing up for Emily or Caleb either. I copied what was on my end and sent it to Minna, who added it on hers.
We were down to the wire when I gave Minna the “ready to send” go-ahead. When pages are RTS (that’s true behind the scenes newsroom talk), Minna “breaks the links,” which means we can see pages on our end but can no longer make any changes. And I just happened to be scrolling through a few minutes later and noticed that my Sundays were still Saturdays on Minna’s end.
STOP THE PRESSES!
Minna relinked that page and, in a fit of paranoia, I had Emily make the change, since her computer was working just fine. I glanced over some of the other pages I’d proofed, namely my obits page, but everything else seemed to be in order.
It wasn’t until the next day when we were putting the paper online that I realized that not one of the changes I thought I’d made to obits had been saved. I was relieved to have had Emily make the important change to my story and thankful that my A6 changes were nitpicky things like adding bullet separators to even out copy boxes rather than correcting typos and the like.
But still.
Yadda yadda yadda, Kevin in tech worked some magic and got my computer syncing again. I have not had any problems since. Give it time, I guess.
The moral of this sad tale is that, as with everything on the technological front, issues can happen with copy. Changes we think we’ve made do not, in fact, get made. That’s alarming. That’s also technology.
And wow, I really lucked out in this instance. That could have been a disaster.
We recently ran a photo of general interest that had been submitted to us by a proud grandparent. This person included names, which we ran as sent.
This is nothing new. We often get submissions, which we run as space allows as a service to the community. I love submissions — with only three and a half of us on staff, it’s a great way for us to cover more of what is going on in our county.
(I know I keep saying that, but no one really seems to believe it; I often hear, “I thought you had more reporters,” when I’m explaining, again, why I’m not able to personally cover an event.)
After the photo ran, we got a call from a different, rather disgruntled reader whose husband’s name had been misspelled. She had plenty of other complaints as well, and accused staffers of not caring very much about accuracy or even the news.
Um … yeah, that sucked. It’s no fun to be on the receiving side of such a call, especially when your motives are pure, i.e. providing coverage for an event that likely wouldn’t have made it into the paper otherwise. When we receive submissions, we often have to assume that the information we are getting is correct.
(See “deadline days are crazy” paragraph above to remind yourself of why time is lacking on our end. And also know that every day is a deadline day.)
Juxtaposed with that unfortunate incident is the lovely, handwritten note we received from the Sunshine Club on Friday, thanking the paper for our coverage of Alzheimer’s and dementia issues. It’s not unheard of, but it is uncommon to get a thank-you for an article. We mostly hear when people are unhappy — and that could be anything from a misspelled word on our Facebook page to a perceived slight in the print edition. We don’t expect thanks, nor is that why we provide coverage.
But it is always nice when we get it.
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