Workin' for the (news)man

Happy V-Day to those who do the candy and cards thing (or the BMW or diamonds thing). Paul brought home a beautiful box of truffles last night, as well as a double-dipped Death By Chocolate brownie for himself. He tells me it was delicious.

I started my new freelance job Friday morning. Friday is an odd day to start anything new -- and it didn't come with much warning -- but the people with whom I'm working are super-nice and friendly.

Also, I really, really appreciated the little text messages and IMs of encouragement from the few people I told in advance. So thanks to the person who messaged me with, "Yea-yah! Work that red pen, baby." (Giggle.) And double-thanks to the friend who sent me pics of him working in his cubicle so I didn't feel so out of place back in cube-world. :-)

I didn't want to talk about the freelance work until it started in case it didn't work out. Now that it's a go, I can say it's for niche publications for Charleston's big daily, The Post and Courier. As a strange coincidence, the niche editor is from Memphis, graduated from the same journalism program and worked at the same business paper I did, albeit several years before me. We've never crossed paths, but it's a small world nonetheless.

All the freelance work is on-site, and it was a very, very strange feeling to be back in a big newsroom. Very strange. For five years, I worked at a much smaller paper where it wasn't out of the norm for me to dress down, sit in my little closet and (shh!) kick off my my flip-flops under my desk.

In fact, it's been a long time since I've even been in a big newsroom, so I'd forgotten about all the security measures, the maze of reporters' desks ... even what it felt like to work in a cubicle. But there also was an air of familiarity, right down to how the division had nixed its overhead lights in favor of mood lighting. (Surely this isn't unique to the two big newsrooms in which I've worked, right? A lot of companies do this?) My cube had a desk lamp and a string of Chinese lanterns. Fortunately, I wasn't too rusty on running a Mac and using InDesign. It came back to me quickly and I was able to edit and lay out pages with no real issues.

As an aside, if you've never seen a newsroom, it doesn't look much like The Daily Planet or what have you. In real life, they're bigger and brighter and buzzing with phone calls and keyboard clicks. Spend some time around a reporter, multiply it by, like, 50, and there's your newsroom for you. I'd highly recommend everyone check out the backside of news -- print or TV -- if they get a chance because working in a newsroom is neither as easy nor as glamorous as it might seem. (It doesn't excuse bad reporting and editing, such as the poorly written story Doc mentions in this post, but it does offer a glimpse into what it takes to get the news out every day.)

The freelance work will be a sporadic thing based on their production schedule, but I am headed back Monday to finish what I started Friday. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before that big newsroom doesn't seem so foreign to me.