Newspaper deadlines are brutal

I’d be lying if I said I loved every aspect of the newspaper business.
I have a confession to make. I hate news deadlines.
In this business, we are constantly under the gun with various deadlines in cranking out a newspaper every week. It seems like we just finish one edition when we immediately start the cycle all over again to put together the next edition.
That’s especially true during a holiday week. In this case, it was Memorial Day.
Last week, we finished the May 26 edition late Monday, May 24. There was little to no turn-around time to begin piecing together the next newspaper for the June 2 edition because we had to have it at the press early by Friday, May 28. So basically, we had four days to put together a newspaper that we usually have seven days to deal with.
Throw in two special graduation sections on top of everything else within the same four-day window, and well, you get my point. We do work ahead on special projects, but it seems like no matter how far ahead we work, they always come down to the wire trying to finalize last-minute details.
To put it mildly, it was a madhouse around our operation over the past couple of weeks. I think we drove each other crazy trying to get everything done.
But somehow, a little miracle seems to happen every week: a newspaper is born and published once again for everyone to enjoy. I’ve never totaled it up exactly, but I would guess we put at least 500 hours of work between all of our employees into each publication.
With so many human hours dedicated to producing a newspaper, there will always be room for error. And that’s when mistakes happen in the newspaper. We strive for 100% accuracy, but we’re smart enough to know we’re not perfect.
I can tell you no one beats me up more when we make mistakes than myself. I hate missing a name, getting a headline wrong, having a grammatical error in a sentence or misspelling a word. I’m thankful for spell check to rely on for the most part, but even that doesn’t always catch everything. Unfortunately, once the paper is printed, we have no way to go back and undo what has already been done incorrectly. As they say, it’s the nature of the beast.
We take great pride in our work. I apologize if we sometimes don’t meet your expectations, but I hope you understand just a little bit of where we’re coming from.
If any of us seem a little frazzled at times, it is probably because of deadlines. There is no way to sugarcoat it. Deadlines are brutal.
Guess what? It’s time to go in hot pursuit of putting together yet another newspaper. See you in the next edition!