From the outside looking in
July 7, 2009Last Tuesday and Wednesday I took off work to go on vacation, so I wasn’t in the office. This gave me a chance to see what it’s like on the other side of the fence. I mean, I know that I didn’t used to work at the Battalion, so I already know what it’s like to just be a reader, but the important difference is that now I was just a reader after having experienced it firsthand. It really changed things for me.
I still caught mistakes, reading through the paper. But this time, when I saw that a word was omitted or the spacing was wrong, instead of thinking, oh how sloppy the people at the Battalion are, I thought, Mattie must have moved that at the last second, or, it must have been midnight when they proofed that page. No, it’s still not acceptable, and we need to do our best to keep small mistakes like that at a minimum, but having them does not mean The Battalion is doing a poor job, it just means that they’re students too, and are doing their best to keep up with classes, and social lives, and other organizations, and still put a paper out every night.
The other thing that was different being on the other side was the worry. I just kept thinking, What if something happens? What if there’s a problem that comes up that they need me for? (Which was highly unlikely, because Mattie’s really in charge of sending pages and keeping the newsroom together anyway, I’m just the public face of the paper. But I still worried.)
I highly enjoyed my days off, but am glad to be back amidst the action again, with the inside look at how the Battalion comes together. (And of course, getting all my news a day early.)
