At the beginning of the year, the editors-in-chief of the newspaper have to come up with a schedule for the entire year with exact dates for each of the deadlines. This helps to keep us organized as the year goes on, as well as keeps us from getting behind.  However, it can be difficult and stressful to hold yourself to such tight deadlines.

Sarah speaking:

It was easy to envision change for the newspaper over the summer when my only focus could be on newspaper. This summer we planned to change everything from how our website ran to the design of our print edition. Every aspect of the newspaper had been re-examined, and Jill and I met to develop our extensive plans. Now that newspaper is in full swing and the print issue cycle is starting, holding your staff to deadlines and pushing them to follow new systems is difficult. While juggling class work and my own stories for the website, it is also difficult to monitor all 29 staff members at once. I am excited to introduce staff to change, I just hope I can implement it to the extent I had pictured.

Jill speaking:

This summer when I began making the schedule for this year, I thought about how weird it was that I was planning dates all the way through May. So many things could happen from now until then (snow days, an apocalypse, etc.)  Already, planning out dates is becoming hard to stick to.  We set our worknights up so that staff members had at least a week and a half after they got their story assignments to work on them.  But the day we gave story assignments was so stressful, worrying about whether everyone was happy with them, making sure everyone met with their pages, that I wondered if we would even get our plans done.  I guess I’ve been spoiled these last two weeks, I’d nearly forgotten about all of the stress that comes with the beginning of an issue. This is about the time when my Excedrin headache medicine becomes my best friend, but I couldn’t be looking forward to it more.

Lesson of the week:

1. Plans might be hard to stick to, but this issue is going to be worth the stress.

Lesson three of being an editor-in-chief: check.