A personal reflection – by features editor brandon barb – week 9

This week I wrote a profile on German professor Andrea Fieler. It was the most serious story I took on because she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. It scarred me to speak with her. Not because it was such a heavy issue but because I’ve dealt with breast cancer before.

My grandmother was died of breast cancer when I was around 5 years old. I still remember being the hospital room. My grandpa lifted me up to see her one last time when she was laying in the bed. Because of that I haven’t been inside of a hospital, voluntarily, since then.

The photo Andrea sent us reminded me of my grandmother. I couldn’t look at for the longest time. I don’t speak about my fear of hospitals or why I don’t go near them very often, but I thought this would be a good time to get it off my chest.

What Andrea has gone through and is still going through I couldn’t even begin to imagine. Her struggle is one that few of us actually can.

I want to thank Andrea for letting me write the story, and allowing me to step into her world for a few days. She didn’t have to let such a personal endeavor be read by everyone on NKU’s campus. Thank you Andrea, you are stronger than I could ever be. You have taken everything thrown at you and overcame it with an attitude that it is all going to be ok.

The return of the 20 page monster – Week 8

Look at us, being so full of spunk. We published another 20-page issue on October 12.

Aren’t you proud? Well you should be. Our fearless leader, Cassie, wanted to have at least one 20-page issue this semester, she has been blessed with two.

As a staff we are low on designers. There are four more-than-capable people in Aly, Karli, Emily and Brittany. Even though we have such talent on staff, our girls get overwhelmed with so many stories. We don’t have to deal with design troubles that often, but when a 20-page behemoth is glaring us down, there ends up being quite a few pages that are black and white with no photos.

We’re sorry for out absence last week. No really, we are. It was NKU’s fall break and we didn’t have an issue. Hey, student journalists need breaks too. We did what every student did on those two days off, caught up on some much needed sleep.

Back to the 20-page issue though. We had a lot of stories submitted that week—not only from our staff writers and editors but from the practicum class. That class is doing quite well don’t you think?

We tried a different cover style out. It was a more magazine-inspired than a traditional newspaper cover. University President James Votruba and his wife graced the cover. If you are wondering, the photo is from the Grand opening of Griffin Hall, NKU’s new informatics building. Holla.

Will the Real Page 12 Please Stand Up? – Week 7

Yep, we’re starting to feel like Eminem. Imposter and all…

First off, in our September 28  issue, we misspelled a word on the cover. “Potential” became “potiential.” Jeez. You may say, “c’mon guys, we expect more than that of you.” Yeah, well, we do too. We fixed it online, but obviously, the print edition is a lost cause.

Secondly, we had a MAJOR fail this week with Fetch communication. Oh, and by the way, Fetch is the FTP program that we use to send our pages to the printer every Tuesday.

ANYWAY, somehow, Page 11 went missing, and Page 12 was printed twice on both 11 & 12. However, the version that printed on Page 11 was an old version that didn’t even have all of the updated information.

So, we lost a story. And an ad. Our only ad.

The "imposter" Page 12 on left and the "real" Page 12 on the right. Notice that the one on the left is the old/non-updated version.

But we noticed a weird trend this week. A few of the other pages were the old versions as well.

The only logical conclusion we can come to is that we had made edits after certain pages had already been sent, and failed to communicate those changes. By doing so, the new versions were never sent to the printer.

By losing Page 11, we failed to print the Presidential Search Committee Update story and our Brothers ad. Just in case you’re interested in what you’re missing, take a look here.

For next week, we plan on tasering each other periodically throughout the night. We’re hoping this will inspire us to communicate better. Oh, and we’re going to double-check Fetch. Damn that dog.

 

Murphy’s Law – Week 6

Sometimes, there is structured chaos. It allows you to focus in on a problem, isolate it and eliminate it. The pandemonium around you only pushes you to work harder toward a solution.

Then, there are times where it only furthers stress, and accomplishes nothing. It is a hindrance. A hurdle.

That was this week.

First off, the story that Karli, the Managing Editor was writing involved a lot of notes and research. A LOT. The poor girl had a stack of papers that were color-coded, Post-It noted and every other kind of noted.

If you think we don't do our research, well...you're wrong.

Finally, after 7+ interviews, she was able to piece together the story on production night. Always a no-no, but in this case, incredibly necessary. She even sat in the hall and isolated herself from the staff (and pizza) to tackle the project.

In addition to that, we had to scramble to find out what ads were going in this week, only to find that we only had 1 – 1/2 page black and white ad. This forced us to run 12 pages, and as you know from our previous posts, we HATE 12 pages.

Ultimately, the issue was completed, and a bangin’ cover and centerspread were produced in the melee. Karli’s story involving a possible merger of Black Studies and Women’s’ & Gender Studies was on the cover, and the Features Editor, Brandon Barb, had the centerspread with a Daily Prophet-style Quidditch story.

Despite our large accomplishments and teamwork from the staff, we did have one huge blow to our collective pride. We misspelled a word in the headline on the cover. When this happens, we all wear a badge of shame for a little bit, until we’re able to shake the mistake. However, we DO learn from these, and time-and-time again, find that we need to be more careful on Tuesday. Especially when we’re running an hour past deadline and our eyes are all starting to cross. Just to clarify, we DO know how to spell the word “potential,” and we now understand the principle behind Murphy’s Law.

The week of the art FAIL – AKA Week 5

Or, at least it felt that way. Art for The Northerner is like the tide — it ebbs and flows.

This week…it ebbed. Majorly.

We found ourselves digging for art this week, and even using one of our own as a prop.

Dressing him up for his big, uh, debut...

While it isn’t unheard of to use each other as props at The Northerner, we do find it a little unsettling when this decision is made at 11:30 pm on production night.

However, Aly was able to turn out a bangin’ piece of cover art, where Brandon had been posterized, darkened, and dotted.

Not too shabby for 11:30, eh, Aly?

Even though Aly was able to conquer the cover for the first time in two-ish weeks, we still feel that we fell short on many of the other pages.

Every page contained some form of art, but most of them were small photos that were shoved into a corner. The pieces of art that were dynamic and could’ve really shown off had to be downsized to fit everything reasonably on the page.

We had what seemed like fewer stories this week (everything pales in comparison to the 20 page issue now) but they were all fairly long. In addition to that, a large amount of art had fallen through the cracks this week and leaving us scrambling to find visuals on MCT Campus.

This week taught us the importance of stepping up for your art. We can’t be found guilty of sitting back and waiting on someone else to find it. In a fast-paced society like ours, even the best of stories can’t carry the issue on their own.

Otherwise, we’ll just have to run a “dunce” on the cover each week…

The 20 Page Monster – Week 4

Yep. That's him. He ate our souls this week.

The old saying, “Be careful what you wish for,” couldn’t have rang more true this week.

Last week we addressed our hatred for the 12 page issue. This week, we ran 20 pages.

This was unprecedented for The Northerner.

While we are proud of our accomplishment, it goes without saying that we were at odds with it during production. It was daunting and took a total staff effort to complete it.

Poor Aly the Presentation Editor had quite the job on her hands. On Monday night, a usually unassuming day of the week for us, Aly and Cassie stayed in the office until almost 2 am trying to decide what would go on each page. They even had to “stitch” dry erase boards together to fit all of the pages.

Usually, being hit with that much content isn’t even a reality. It’s generally an EIC’s personal fantasy to have too much content. But, when you go from having a potential 12 page run to having 20, it becomes a handful very quickly. New templates have to be made, the notification has to be sent to the printer, and the entire staff has to dive headfirst into the task of writing headlines, decks, captions and more.

The result, you may ask? Well, we were an hour past deadline. This may sound terrible/awful, but really, it isn’t too terribly shabby. It isn’t something we need to make a habit of, but when we were given our new midnight deadline last semester, there was many-a-night where we were that late with 12 pages.

I guess the moral of the story can be repeated: be careful what you wish for. Or you’ll have a 20 page monster breathing down your neck.

The dreaded “12 page slump,” AKA Week 3

Beware the "12 Page Slump." It will sink your newspaper. And steal your rum.

Want to know how much we hate 12 pages?

A LOT.

We hate 12 pages like the Wicked Witch of the West hates Dorothy.

We hate 12 pages like Liam hates Noel.

We hate 12 pages like Hamlet hates Claudius.

You get the picture.

Here at The Northerner, we have a history of 12 page spreads. Depending on who is EIC at the time, the feeling on 12 pages can change. For times of transition and a small staff, 12 pages is sometimes all that you can muster. For more ambitious EICs, a 12 page spread is just obnoxious.

In all honesty, even our printer doesn’t enjoy 12 pages. It feels like a waste for them, since they print larger newspapers like The Cincinnati Enquirer. But for the past two weeks as we’ve been going through changes, 12 pages has been the most we could handle.

Practical EIC’s say that it is better to have 12 pages of quality than 16 of filler. We try to operate on that belief, but the idea of not being able to escape 12 page runs is scary to us. We know there is 16 pages worth of content on NKU’s campus each week.

We’re trying to end the “12 Page Slump” with the third issue. We’ve even passed around the idea of running a few full-page pictures of just our lovely faces. We’re crossing our fingers that it won’t come to that.

We WILL have 16 pages of quality NKU-centered content.

We hope.

Feeling crumb-ly

Since we’d started off the first week with a strong and thoughtful issue, we were hoping the second week would follow suit.

We weren’t that lucky.

While we’d thought we had an assembly line of new student reporters, we started to realize that some of them came with a factory recall.

Just as almost every student experiences during the first few weeks, The Northerner had experienced a…meltdown. Stories (and writers) started dropping like fainting goats. (And if you’re wondering what we’re talking about, just look here.) We went from having a strong issue, to having almost nothing to fall back on. Stories became stretched, and so did section editors. News Editor Claire Higgins found her normally-bubbly self in the daunting position of having to write four stories for one issue!

Luckily, through the strength of our dedicated (and slightly insane) staff, we made it through week two. Even if we found ourselves flying by the seat of our pants, and relying on two college student standbys: pizza and rock ‘n’ roll. (For those of you who don’t know, this is “rock ‘n’ roll.”)

Features Editor Brandon Barb covered Giuseppe’s in Covington, a neighborhood pizzeria. Daren Harris, former NKU cheerleading coach is at the helm of this small-town eatery, and still remains a proud NKU supporter. He sat down with Barb for over an hour, discussing everything from cheerleading to drunken firemen. (We can’t print the details here, though. Or anywhere…)

Daren Harris, owner of Giuseppe's Pizza sits down with Features Editor Brandon Barb to discuss slinging dough and loving NKU.

A&E Editor Roxanna Blevins and Managing Editor Karli Wood found themselves in 1973 (before they were both born?!?) at the Bad Veins video shoot in WCET-TV studios. The band recorded the video for their new single “Dancing on TV” from 2pm-10pm, and called on the tri-state to take part as extras. By the end of the shoot, we were told that over 40 locals had proudly donned 100% polyester. (See example(s) below.)

Extras mill around on the set of the Bad Veins music video, "Dancing on TV." The video was shot at WCET-TV in Studio A on Aug. 27.

With all this mention of the A&E and Features sections, you’re probably wondering what happened to News. EIC Cassie Stone wrote the cover piece on the Foundations of Knowledge, NKU’s new(er) general education program. Despite Votruba’s reassurance at Fall Convocation that the issues with SACS are over, we felt that it needed one last go-round. As any self-respecting newspaper knows, you can never satisfy everyone.

We had our fair share of ups, downs, ins and outs during week two. The moral of the story? Sometimes, even The Northerner feels a little crumb-ly. (But we’re still pretty cool.)

The scoop on our scoop

News Editor Claire Higgins furiously scribbles notes at a press conference following Fall Convocation Aug. 19. Terry Mann was being interviewed by a WKRC reporter.

Every issue, there’s something we kick ourselves about. Sometimes there’s even two things. For our first issue, it was not being the ones to break the news that President James Votruba is retiring.

In all truth, we’d known the day before the announcement. We could’ve broken the story. But we were under embargo, meaning we only got the information because we pledged not to publish until the official announcement was made.

We kind of shot ourselves in the foot on the story though, because our leaker wasn’t the only one spewing forth information. We were scooped by several local news outlets that got the information early as well, and had no problem publishing before Votruba made the announcement.

Still, we managed to get a story online relatively quickly and followed up with a story in the next week’s print issue.

Then there was the whole issue of deciding what to put on the cover. Because you know that even though the university president announced his retirement, all anyone heard was when he said NKU hopes to name a conference by the end of the semester. So what gets the cover? Votruba or sports?

We went with sports. And here’s why.

Campus is abuzz whenever someone mentions D-I. But everyone seems to expect the transition will happen, and it will happen overnight and everything will be grand. We wanted to put together a story about the steps in the process and what will need to happen to get us to D-I.

And if you think we put D-I on the cover because we wanted people to pick up the newspaper, well, you’re right. Of course we want people to pick up the paper. Why else would we forego sleep, homework and proper nutrition to create the thing?

In the beginning was the word.

And then there was us.

So, you’re curious what goes on behind the scenes, eh? I bet you’re wondering what this crazy group of students holed up in Founders Hall is thinking each week we put out a newspaper, accusing our professors of plotting against us, criticizing Student Government’s decisions and just generally causing mayhem and getting into shenanigans.

Or maybe you’re not. Maybe you just stumbled upon us. Either way, welcome.

This blog began as a unanimous vote from the staff as a way to explain ourselves to our readers. It wasn’t so much that we were facing a lot of questions, but because we weren’t. I’ll just be honest. I rarely get letters and our most-commented-on story last semester was about Sarah Palin.

The thing is, while we don’t see evidence in our feedback that people are reading us, we see papers taken out of stands and see the hits on our website. We see you sitting in hallways reading our newspaper, and we love it. And we hear you talking.

Never may you know that a Northerner editor is lurking around the corner, feverishly cramming for a test because she was too busy putting the paper to bed to study the night before.

We know we make mistakes and we know you question our decisions. And we respect your opinions. But still, we want to invite you into our newsroom and help you get to know us. Because while all most everyone sees is the final product, there’s blood, sweat and a helluva lot of fun going into every issue.

Each week, we’ll post a picture of a staff member in the line of duty – working on a story, photograph, design, etc. We’ll give explanations for any seemingly zany decisions we made and insight into our personalities.

And we realize that our blog title, “Georgia 10,” might not make sense at first. No, it doesn’t actually have anything to do with the state or with peaches. It’s the font and size of our body text in print.

Welcome to our dysfunctional family. I hope you enjoy spending time with us as much as we love having you.