Hard day's night

Tuesday was another long day/night at the ASNE Reporter. Not as long as Monday, but it was close. Our work flow is getting a little smoother as students and editors get used to the routine of our temporary newspaper.

A little smoother. In the photos you can see editors (including my boss, Chris Beringer, top) hard at work. It was a big push at the end as late copy came in, photos were changed and headlines rewritten. Just like a real newspaper: hours of tedium followed by minutes of panic.

We're located deep in the heart of the JW Marriott on Pennsylvania Avenue. The sun doesn't penetrate here. I walked outside at lunch. It was about 80 degrees and people were enjoying lunch in the sun. Amazing. There is life outside the Marriott. How did that happen?

The bar was filled with editors last night, many in full convention mode. Think "Animal House" meets "Fight Club": lots of war stories and bragging about past exploits. The future for our industry (and this group) is tinged with uncertainty, however. What will this group look like in a few years? Will it even exist? Or will it save itself (and its industry) by radically reinventing itself?

All good questions with no quick answers.

The daily miracle

We made it.

Our first day/night of producing the ASNE Reporter was challenging, to say the least (we knew our original deadline was optimistic and we didn't make it but still had time to spare). The resulting publication looks pretty good. Click here to see the online version.

It didn't help that one of the fonts I brought had a problem. The italic font was corrupted and kept crashing when the pages arrived at the print site (Gannett's facility in Springfield, Virginia). We had to hunt down the bad fonts on several pages, reformatting whole stories at the last minute. Ick. My co-designers, Jay McDaniel and Tiffany Sakato, were great, learning new software and producing great-looking pages on a tight schedule.

Tomorrow looks to be a bit easier. Whew!

Celebrity moment: Exhausted, Chris Beringer, Sandra Long and I made our way to the Marriott bar for food and big drinks. Who should be sitting at the next table but Dick Gregory, the social activist, and his entourage (Google him, younger folks, he's important). We were cool and tried, very casually, to hear what they were talking about (Gregory had everyone laughing) but without luck.

Ah, the celebrity life of D.C.!