Collegiate Times

If you've ever wondered how our lovely college paper is produced on a day-to-day basis, now's your chance to learn.

The newsroom in 365 Squires Student Center is a complicated conglomeration of sprockets and gizmos and gadgets. Not really; it's an old office with lots of desks and various Apple computers scattered around (not including those laptops belonging to CT staffers). But there is a lot of talking, sometimes yelling, frequently singing and dancing, and -- occasionally -- some writing.

I say occasionally because most of our stories are written by staff writers or reporters outside the newsroom. Take the news department, for example.

Every Wednesday at 6 p.m. the news team has a meeting. This is where the New River Valley news editor (Caleb Fleming), the campus news editor (Ashley Oliver) and the university editor (T. Rees Shapiro) gather with their reporters and staff writers to assign stories for the upcoming week. I should also add that the distinction between campus editor and university editor has still not been made clear to me. I'm assuming one involves student life and the other administration. But hey, it's David Grant's paper and we're just working onit.

Every section has a meeting like this during the week. It is the most efficient way for section editors to meet with their staffs and disseminate assignments and information. The CT also uses a PBwiki Web site that can be updated by any subscribed staffer.

This is where reporters and editors update their respective sections with story ideas and detail that week's budget. But these meetings are where we make sure that reporters actually read the wiki.

In newsroom speak, a budget is a calendar that describes the paper's contents by day. For example, the 5 p.m. Monday budget meeting will cover what stories will appear in Tuesday's paper and decide the priority of the issue's news stories. Management, section editors and layout designers are all present for the budget meetings.

Non-deadline stories are due to section editors by 1 p.m. daily. At this point, the editors read over the stories to make sure they fulfilled the assignment and contain the necessary criteria to be printed (i.e., adequate number of sources and/or quotes, etc.). Section editors also do some preliminary fact checking. But for the most part that job is handed off to the copy editors.

Two copy editors come in at 2 p.m. to read the freshly deposited articles. As a former copy editor, I can safely say this is the most grassroots part of the playbook. If you think the CT has grammatical errors when it's printed, you should see it before the stories are copy edited. A lot of our writers are English or communication majors, but that doesn't mean they know grammar, style or mechanics. I could go on and on about the stupid mistakes writers make, but that's for another column. And if there are any errors in this column, I blame them on the managing editor. We'll get to him later.

By the time I come in, the office is usually speckled with people from corner to corner. Laurel and her opinions desk are at the front of the room, so her smiling face can greet you as you walk in the door. Copy sits to the right by the windows with a lovely view of the smokers and bike racks at the back door below them. Bethany and the features team sit behind Laurel on the left of the office, under the fancy Collegiate Times logo painted on the original Squires brick wall. Behind features is what I like to call a hodge-podge of disarray. It's supposed to be the sports desk, but the way the furniture is set up it becomes a black hole of backpacks and chairs, with three or four men crammed into a two-foot by four-foot block. But hey, if sports wants to get cozy when spewing out their stats, I say hear, hear!

Next to sports on the back wall is the photo editor's desk: my first position at the CT. That computer (which used to be the best one three years ago) will always hold a soft spot in my heart.

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