Austin speaking:
When you’re producing a newspaper, structure is crucial. Turning in drafts on set deadlines, attending our bimonthly Monday worknights and following standard cycle procedures are just a few examples of things that all staff members understand are expectations. However, the journalism gods aren’t always in our favor, sometimes putting roadblocks in our way. Last week we wrote about how we had to postpone our rough draft deadline after getting two snow days. This week, we were forced to cancel our short work night due to inclement weather and we had two more snow days. This left us with only a few days to produce a whole paper by our original deadline. We decided we didn’t want issue six to look like a kindergartner’s coloring book, so we pushed the deadline back a week. Additionally, we added another long work night to make up for lost work time. Things have been a little chaotic, but hey, what’s new? We’ve learned by now to just roll with things.
Kristina speaking:
I love snow days, I really do. They are rarely regrettable in my mind. Though when it comes to finishing the newspaper, my priorities become a little skewed – finishing the newspaper takes precedence. Before leaving for the anticipated snow days (we couldn’t contain our excitement!) we reminded our staff to use this time to their advantage. But judging from meeting with the staff members yesterday, most of the snow days were spent sleeping and sledding. Because if there’s one thing that every high school kid is good at, it’s procrastination (myself definitely included). We are hoping that the additional long worknight we added next Monday will help our staff put out a quality sixth issue. Here at the JagWire, we do what it takes to get our paper done.
Hanna speaking:
As with most things in life, flexibility is key when it comes to the newspaper. We have to form our schedules around when people are available for interviews, when certain events take place and the deadlines that we set for our paper. When one of these things changes, let’s just say it isn’t pretty. So when we began with a short deadline and then threw in four snow days, we decided that we, as a staff, needed to be flexible. As Austin said, we pushed the deadline back a week and added an extra long worknight. Hopefully this will be enough time to allow everyone to get their best work done. And since our biggest problem last issue seemed to be procrastination, maybe this issue has scared people enough that they will realize that putting their work off until the last minute isn’t even an option.