Running a small community newspaper can be a little crazy at times, in fact many times.
This is a job that requires precision and focus, but that’s usually taking place amid frequent changing circumstances.
Monday, production day for The New Era, can be especially challenging.
“Hey Scott, we just found out we need to double the size of that ad!” (Not a bad problem from a business standpoint, but definitely a challenge after we’ve already gotten everything to fit neatly on the page).
* * *
“__(No names here, to protect the guilty)__, where’s your story?”
“Oh, my source hasn’t called me yet, so it’s not done yet.”
“I though we agreed it’d be done by Friday!” …
* * *
“Hey, ______, where’s the photo you took of that meeting?”
“Photo?”
It can be a challenge. Never boring.
Putting together a newspaper is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle that you’re also creating the pieces for. Everything has to fit, and it needs to make sense.
When I read the columns Dr. Dave Larson submits each month, drawn from his years of experience as a veterinarian dealing with all sorts of crazy situations, well, it sounds familiar – without the animal element. Or maybe with it.
Our dog Cash is getting on in years, so we decided to breed our Labrador retriever Kona to get ourselves a quality pup so when Cash’s time comes, we’ll have a smooth transition. Things went pretty smoothly. It was pretty obvious that the pups were on the way when Kona started slowing down (uncharacteristically) after a couple of miles on our morning runs together.
The due date was upon us, so on a recent Monday morning we decided to bring Kona to work with us. She likes it there, she gets along with the staff, and she really enjoys visiting that little side yard located between The New Era and Figaro’s.
We figured she could hang out at the office where we could keep an eye on her.
It was a pretty typical Monday, with an assortment of unexpected developments to keep us on our toes. As usual, I was trying to mop up some stories that needed to go in and get that taken care of so Cory, our design editor, could place them in the paper.
Since Kona was, theoretically, just days away, I made sure to give her a chance to get outside every so often, to take care of business. Since Kona was very pregnant, she was in a mellow mood, content to flop on the floor instead of surreptitiously trying to figure out what goodies might be in those trash cans. Things were going swimmingly.
One thing I had to do this particular day was to get hold of Dan Tow, the athletic director at Sweet Home High School to get some details for some sports stories we were working on, one of which is in today’s Spring Sports Preview.
We’d been discussing the girls swim team’s being honored as Team of the Month for the 4A division after posting a near-perfect GPA and I’d decided to ask him about another topic when I heard a muffled exclamation from one of our staffers.
Mid-sentence, phone to my ear, I glanced over my shoulder. There, on the floor outside my office door, lay a puppy, encased in, well, a birth sac. Kona was running around the room, looking excited.
“Uh, Dan,” I said. “I think I’m going to have to get back to you. Sorry. I know this is hard to believe, but my dog just had a pup.”
Silence on the other end.
“Really,” I said, hurriedly explaining.
So I got the pup, a female chocolate Lab, breathing, we cleaned up the carpet with some wipes, and we found some towels and a heater to keep the puppy warm until my wife could get back from an errand and take them home.
That pup was the first of nine, by the way.
Anyway, the rest of the story is that I went home soon after and took a nice little nap, right? After all that, I deserved it.
Actually, no. (We’re all about accuracy at this newspaper. )
I went back to work.
We had an awards banquet to cover.
We still had a paper to put out.