Category Archive

I have nothing against advisers in college newsrooms, except that so often advising is just a front for interfering.

This story about the St. Louis University student paper (via Romenesko) made me cringe.

Basically, the administration might ban the old adviser from the newsroom because he keeps showing up even on production nights even though the adminisration hired a new full-time adviser as part of process to “rewrite the newspaper’s charter.”

“We think it serves everybody to have one voice as an adviser,” [university spokesman Jeff] Fowler said. “You shouldn’t have two people with different ideas causing confusion.”

Mindwash the baby watchdogs, that’s bold. If you can prevent journalists from growing up as critical thinkers, you’ve got a pretty effective censorship tool. Ugh, the cringe-count is astronomical. The sad part is this kind of interfering from all sides probably isn’t that rare. I’d like to think student editors would better rise to the challenge if they weren’t coddled or threatened all the time.

Thank goodness for smart student editors willing to train a new guard, independent budgeting, an administration that wouldn’t dare censor, and Al Donnelly. The memory of free reign might make the rest of our careers harder, but thank goodness for the Evergreen, where our mistakes and our triumphs were always our own.

Perusing the NYT online, I came across this font article. It didn’t hold my attention the way it should, considering it includes fonts and replicating history, but that’s because it’s just an ennui sort of day.

But I did find this bit when I skimmed to the end:

Fonts can shape reality in intangible ways, as Phil Renaud, a graphic designer from Phoenix, discovered when he studied the relationship between his grades and the fonts he used for his college papers. Papers set in Georgia, a less common font with serifs, generally received A’s while those rendered in Times Roman averaged B’s.

Not a scientific study, but interesting considering how many of us printed out college papers in Georgia (the Evergreen’s body copy font) during our time at WSU. I always used Georgia, Utopia or Minion Pro.

I think the quintessential experience of being a student editor at the Evergreen was printing out a paper about free speech typed in Georgia (or Utopia) two minutes before class started on that gray paper we had for no reason in spring 2007 or the backs of dummies.

Everyone seems to be leaving Pullman, finally, including me. My last phone conversation with Victor before he left Sunday reminded me of this farewell from the Evergreen staff in the 1898 commencement issue:

“To the graduating class the Evergreen bids you God-speed, and wishes you all the success possible. May your lives be examples which will bring credit upon yourselves and your alma mater.”

Today I was looking forward to a leisurely day of running, breakfast, reading the paper, lunch, reading a book, doing laundry, dinner, and going to a movie.

Then WSU announced a new provost.

I was not pleased. I have yet to have a boring day since graduation. I’ve informally been the Evergreen admin reporter, covering provost candidates, more provost candidates, A2P2 and other things that come up. But I still have no interest in looking for a job, probably because I haven’t been bored enough to care yet. How can I miss reporting the news if the news won’t let me take a break?

I do get to sleep in and go running more. So that’s nice. And I get to eat dinner and not go to class. But I’m still looking forward to a change of pace, or at the very least a change of scenery.

Another little gem from a turn-of-the-century Evergreen:

I was trying to come up with a more modern equivalent but couldn’t think of anything. Though I think it’s worth noting that Evergreen ladies have been harassing male Evergreeners about smoking ever since the paper first appeared.

And yes, the Evergreen used to publish poems and other little ditties and jokes. The “Ex” means it came through Exchange, a pretty informal content-sharing system between college papers. It was kind of a matter of pride to publish clever little things other papers would find witty enough to publish.

Also, I apologize in general for the poor quality of these old images. I take pictures from the microfilm tables so I don’t have to write everything down, but they don’t turn out great because 1) I have to take them from a slant because getting directly above the projected image blocks the light source, 2) the machine itself and the old microfilm rarely focus perfectly, 3) my camera doesn’t focus well in such low light, but flash washes out the projected image, and 4) I get lazy when I’m doing this for multiple hours. Lo siento.

I spent a good portion of the afternoon rolling through old microfilm of the days of the Evergreen to finish up that history project. Lest we too often think about how awesome it would be to have a teletype machine and all the other great thing that came with being a journalist in the past, I can safely say I am glad I was not editor of the Evergreen during a time when it was okay to publish racist advertisements:

I found a trove of photos I took while bored during spring semester training and came across this one. We were sifting through an elaborately labeled file cabinet full of ancient stuff when we found a file folder tab for file folder tabs.

Making the tail end of this week’s birthdays: Victor turned 23 today, Jacob turned 23 on Thursday and baby Brian turned 22 on Tuesday. May this next year be full of wonderful times for you all.

To fill out my last timecards, I had to look back the stories I wrote this pay period. While doing this, I noticed a major meaning-changing error that someone added into my story. This makes me incredibly angry. I know it wasn’t Christina, because I was watching over her shoulder while she edited and talked with her about that part.

Also, it was not ambiguous. Someone added a bracketed phrase to a quote that makes it incorrect. Editors: Do not change quotes without checking with the writer! Especially if the writer is sitting like 10 feet away from you! Especially don’t change quotes without at least reading carefully!

It makes me that much angrier because this now-misquoted person had previously called me about a genuine error in a story that was my fault for being sloppy on deadline (that none of my editors caught).

OK, now it’s time to get over it. But damn, that makes me angry. I beat myself up pretty hard about not getting errors, and to have someone else add them in without even trying to check with me really undermines my will to do this anymore.

This is the layout of the Murrow East basement when the Evergreen first moved in back in August 1972.

I made a rough updated version of the map for those of you who don’t spend more than half your life here.

The Evergreen moved into the new Murrow Communications Complex after it was renovated from the old Arts Hall to house the communications department, radio, television and Student Publications. They added Murrow West at that time and moved the Evergreen from its home in the basement of the CUB, where it had been since 1952 when the CUB opened.

Murrow East was originally called Science Hall when it was built in 1899. The structure was partially designed by college president E.A. Bryan, who added the semicircle shape to draw in more light for the new microscopes used on upper floors. The space now known as the Evergreen newsroom was originally an animal husbandry demonstration room. Victor says this explains all the cow ghosts.

I carried this sticker all the way to campus for Victor’s hair. He hasn’t had a haircut in a while, though you can’t tell that much in this photo because his hair is what we call “small” (as in, “Victor, why is your hair so small?”) because he just showered. My neighbors bought a potted office plant for their “Office Space” party and it’s been on the landing by the stairwell all week with this sticker.

I dove back into the archives today for my 499 special project. Try to guess the answers:

1. When did the Evergreen first have AP wire?

2. When did the Evergreen first become “daily”?

3. When did the Evergreen move to its current location?
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This is what the end of my time at the Evergreen looked like.

Pure happiness, clearly. I remember being really sad when the seniors left last year, and it would be really hard this year if I weren’t also leaving. We’ve had a lot of good people on staff. Here are some other pictures from that night:

Some of us are at Nick’s tonight, and Allison was just informed we no longer work for the Evergreen.

“We should do something unethical,” she said with mischief in her eyes. “Let’s steal all our press kits!”

After two straight years, last night was my final evening as an editor in the Evergreen newsroom. It was a good night, putting to use everything I’ve learned here: I wrote two last-minute briefs, one staff report, complained about a wordy article, delegated work for an amibitious project I didn’t have time to finish, gave Brian a hug, coordinated art and layout, and finished a front-page feature at 50 inches – 20 more than expected – right at deadline.

I did, however, resist snapping at Christina even though she was annoyed with me all night. So that was atypical. I’ll attribute that to being well-fed.

Also I had my senior column done ahead of time.

And so today, when I woke up with Evergreen morning terrors, I told myself to cut it out. It’s over. I’m not sad – yet. I may not be. I’ve never really been sad about leaving high school or the track team or anything. I mourn minutes from the middle instead.

So today, finished with the newspaper, I am … sitting at my desk in the newsroom. Yep, time to finish up the thesis for good.

I just came across this when I was doing a Google search for one of my stories, and it’s the New York Times’ info box on WSU. It’s cool that The Daily Evergreen is listed as a resource “selected by researchers and editors.” I mean, it’s not like The Moscow-Pullman Daily News is listed, or WSU Today, or Cougster or whatever. We know we provide something no one else does, but it’s good to have it validated.

I’m making a doubletruck for Monday (the last issue of the semester) for events that occurred during the four (or five) years while WSU seniors were in college. So the best way to find some of the older things I’ve forgotten about was going through old volumes of Evergreens, and Nick kindly agreed to help. Among finding some of the perennial favorites (”Listen on you MP3 player,” the black-and-white rainbow), I found some great old clips for some of the silly things we did a long time ago.

• My first appearance in the Evergreen, a letter to the editor. My columnist gig started soon after.
• Nick’s first story, a real scintillating one about students starting school that Jacob assigned.
• Jacob epitomizing himself by writing a review of The Old Man and the Sea. (Bonus misspelled “Hemmingway” in the summary graph and a blurry vintage mug.)
• Brian’s name misspelled (and probably mispronounced).
• Victor committing a travesty to journalism by writing about the availability of Chinook yearbooks. (Does Jacob get credit for assigning that one, too?)
• Nick bringing out the drama of a multicultural program fundraising dinner. The second graph deserves to get quoted:

“Recognition and awareness reverberated from table to table throughout the evening, as hundreds of Cougars, young and old, raised forks and glasses to multiculturalism on campus.”

There were some pretty golden headlines along the way, too:

• “Board of Regents approves WSU changes”
• “Ceremony honors graduates” (i.e. “graduation”)
• “Athletes are people, too”
• “Montana county sheriff IDs zombie party killer”

Journalist and WSU alum Edward R. Murrow would have been 100 years old today. Happy birthday!

Incidentally, the 1930 Chinook we have at Student Publications has had all of its pages including Murrow’s photo clipped out. Like five of them. It’s a shame. Only his standard senior photo is still there, so I scanned it in.

Despite how busy I’ve been, Christina mentioned a need for some paper letter-cutting skills and I couldn’t resist. So during production tonight we made her presentation poster for an Honors history class that I took last year. I did my final paper on the history of smoking; Christina is doing hers on why everyone liked President Dwight Eisenhower. She’s played this video like four dozen times in the past two days and even has a subtle little dance to go along with it.

Nick has been really bored recently, but I’m not envious. It sounds nice at first, but it’s like walking home freezing in the middle of winter and thinking how those really, really hot summer days would be pretty nice. And then you remember sweating all the time and sunburns and how it’s not really that nice at all. Neither extreme is fun, and I’ve always preferred to be too cold than too hot anyway.

Today I decided work and stress should follow an ice-cube tray model. A certain amount of work gets poured onto each person, but it spills over to other people before anyone gets over-filled. I’ve been right up to the brim and relying on surface tension for like the past month. It’s just stupid and inefficient to have some people completely overworked and while other people have nothing to do.

It would be like communism, I guess, but only with the smart people you like and trust to do work well. Like a responsibility commune.

This SoundSlides project, which I made for class, is about how our buildings are magically clean every morning when we return to class. Hint: It’s not magic. And those of us who work late know Mike and appreciate his work even while we take it for granted. 

I’ll figure out how to embed it here later. But for now I have way too much else to do, so you can view it along with some more commentary about the project at my old/class blog.

Here’s the quick version of things that are interesting today.

First, to finish up from yesterday, this is the story we ended up printing this morning. As Christina pointed out, we’re quite the fire team. Here’s Jacob’s version from the other side of the state. We texted and back and forth all day yesterday as we traced rumors and Google tidbits and finally tracked down that one of the WSU students arrested for the fires is the son of a well-known judge in Aberdeen. At the end of the day Jacob called to say thanks for both the tip and the most awkward phone interview ever. The judge hadn’t heard about the whole thing until Jacob called to ask him about it, and I’m glad (and a little appalled) that’s included in the story. UPDATE: I should clarify, I get a certain amount of reporter delight in seeing us ruin someone’s day, as if it’s our fault. I have a simultaneous conflicting feeling of pity for the poor judge, who has an awful day and also gets to look kind of silly in the paper. I’m not sure I’d be brave enough to include any of that unless my editor really wanted me to.

Second, here’s a dumb magazine I had to make for class. It turned out alright for putting fairly little effort into it.

Third, we at the Evergreen got a copy of an e-mail the university president sent out today requesting no administrative/professional hires in preparation for economic downturn. It also said he was “not desirous of making a mass announcement to the entire WSU community in this regard.” Check out the story on tomorrow’s front page.

Finally, I got the pretty fun assignment for our “20 of the most influential students” series to write about the ASWSU president and editor-in-chief Brian. For having minimal time to write, they turned out okay. I was glad I was able to work in fedoras, puppies and democracy.

So that fire thing I ran to last night turned out to be kind of a big deal. The damage doesn’t seem too extensive, but two students were arrested on five counts of first-degree arson – a class A felony – and four counts of reckless burning in the second degree. Both of them are jazz people, a saxophonist and a trombonist, which is a random fact not in the story we have online now. One of them is from Aberdeen, so I also alerted Jacob.

There have been updates all day. It would be fun if I weren’t so tired and overwhelmed with projects to get done.

It was 2 a.m. and I was going to post these pictures of late-night thesis writing when Christina called. She said Tyler said the scanner was going crazy with several fires on campus and he could smell smoke. So I put my contacts back in, dressed appropriately for running, and grabbed the extraneous heavy stuff out of my reporting bag. Then I ran to campus, it’s probably a little more than a mile to the Stephenson Complex, which turned out to be the only site of any concern. All the residents were outside, tired and cold, and we stood around for a while to see what was going on. It was nothing too serious, though a rumor that the alarms weren’t working may turn out to be something.

I should have said, “Good, I’m glad you and Tyler are handling it,” and then kept working on my thesis. But it could have been exciting if there really were multiple fires on campus, especially since earlier I’d been thinking about the string of arson fires that capped off my all-nighter last fall.

So now it’s 3 a.m.

UPDATE: Here’s the fires story they put together.

Brian doesn’t like doing editorial board. In his defense, we make fun of him a lot for things like lying on the table while we talk. In our defense, he does things like lying on the table – or, yesterday, curling up inside the smelly futon. Yes, that is him in the photo. Christina is poking him, because that is what you do with reluctant editors hiding in futons. And we’re still the most productive student leaders on campus.

I turned in my timecards for the first half of April today. It totaled 11 issues as copy chief, 6.5 stories and 3.5 photos (we get paid fractions for smaller things). Considering I’ve also been doing my thesis, class and birthday, it’s not a bad pay period. It might be my best ever. It’s definitely the best I’ll be getting for a while, unless I get myself employed in a hurry.

To put it in perspective, this best pay period at the Evergreen was twice the work for less than half what I got paid at my summer internship. We’re looking at about $6 an hour, and remember this is the best ever.

I read the Pullman and WSU police logs every day for my job. A lot of times it’s funny, tragic, disheartening and absurd all at the same time, kind of like what’s you’d expect from the messy side of people’s lives.

But this, from the Pullman Police, was just adorable.

08-P03116     Welfare Check
Complainant: Non-Disclosed
Incident Address : SW Fountain St
Responding Officers: Bill Orsborn
Disposition : ACT
Cad Comments:
Report of a small girl that was outside in the back yard crying. Officer responded. Crying because she couldn’t get her umbrella to open up.

Today in my 475 class we were looking at the inner workings of Wikipedia and definitely the most interesting part (aside from late-night rambles through entries on obscure writers’ lives and archaic technology) is the history tab on each entry. Naturally I looked up our Daily Evergreen entry, and found evidence of this risible sabotage.

It’s also kind of silly, because we’ve had more conservative columnists this year than anytime in my memory of the Evergreen.

This is the last time I’ll talk about my birthday for a really long time. I promise. It was a good one, though I’m coming down from it now and crashing pretty hard. Too much sugar and excitement. Thanks to my grandparents for bringing delicious cake, and Allison for taking these pictures! I also love this picture of Christina taunting Brian.

When I called my mom to do some last-minute fact-checking for my Mom’s Weekend column, I asked her about the giant silver pencil. It was not the kind of gift you anticipate at all, and my first impression was that it would make a great weapon. I was certain there was some sophisticated use, maybe ornamentation or something, so I asked my mom.

“I saw it and thought it would make an awesome weapon,” she said.

She wasn’t going to send it to me since it’s kind of heavy, but she knew it would be useful in the newsroom if only for a month or so. She liked how it played on the idea that a writer’s pen is her weapon. If the pen is mightier than the sword, a pencil-shaped bludgeon is clearly the mightiest.

I’ve been taking some photos this semester, mostly when we’re desperate or the other photographers are lazy. I never get assignments, but I don’t ask for them, either. I haven’t tried that hard to learn the D1H well even though I have access, and I’ll be the first to say I’m not a very good photographer yet.

I’m starting to think I should stop saying that. Not because I’m any good, but because I’m decent enough to get a little respect and right now I don’t get any. I consistently disagree with which photo (of mine) is best, but I don’t trust myself enough to really argue. Everything I do might get better if I started arguing less over my writing and more over my photos.

Tomorrow I’ll have a front-page hail photo (slow art day). Which one is better?

Read the rest of this entry »

The new WSU police chief starts today, less than 24 hours since he accepted the job and 364 days since the university announced the search.

Thought I’d mention it as a follow-up to last week. Here’s the really short story on it with all the obvious quotes about how happy everyone is. I do think the positive comments are genuine, though, not desperation. There will be a longer profile next week after the department has time to settle in a bit.

Also, I had to think it was funny he was hired on April Fools’ Day. I resisted mentioning that in the story.

Here’s a nice little PR-type video for The Daily Evergreen, which I made for a class. I did not spend much time on it because I am so overwhelmed with everything in the past few weeks, but it’s not a bad idea to have a video answering commonly asked questions so editors don’t have to do it all the time.

My apologies to Christina, who was a very good sport about participating and not particularly pleased by the results. Later I might post the segment with uncooperative Brian. I probably wouldn’t be thrilled about being on video, though, I don’t blame him much. I did get over the “sound of my voice” thing and it’s decent enough I can actually listen to it without cringing.

Tomorrow is April Fools’ Day. At the Daily Evergreen, this means just one thing: somehow messing with General Manager Al Donnelly’s office. Last year we provided an infusion of Happy Cats. We found some of those same cats tonight as we launched a new theme.

I found this in a story while being copy chief today (sorry, this will probably only make sense to journalists):

The group hopes for strong participation so these and other concerns can be addressed and discussed and a greater, more knowledgable awareness can be raised.

Since I’m always pointing out the silly things Victor does, I thought I’d give him credit for how his standard white board concept sketch, left, became the real Evergreen Sports blog, right. And it didn’t take seven months.

And I’m totally kidding about the headline, sort of. I totally appreciate Victor’s work, both the useful kind and the absurd.

As this semester’s Keeper of the Quotes, I transcribe all the ridiculous things we say in the newsroom into a text edit file for posterity and some busy night a few weeks from now when we’ll all sit around laughing at the things we said a month ago rather than working. Then I erase the board so we have room to say more funny things or write down each other’s statements out of context.

As copy chief, I sometimes write on the board errors that make me laugh. These were my favorites recently:

• foreword (instead of forward, weirdest homophone mix-up ever)
• nurtition (like four times in one article)
• general manger
• Provost Bost Babes (instead of Bob Bates)

On a totally nerdy tangent, I think it would be incredibly fascinating to do a content analysis of our quote board archives from the past few years to see how our cultural themes and memes cycle in and out. Of course, the things that really become part of the lexicon here don’t make the board, because by definition they’ve become too normal. Solely from my impressions, I think this year we have more potty humor and fewer death threats compared to last year.

Apparently it’s WSU’s birthday today. It was March 28, 1890, that the Washington state Legislature established the land-grant college named Washington Agricultural College and School of Science. I would have known this if I’d thought about it, though it was the Student Alumni Connection’s cake distribution on the mall that tipped me off. I took pictures, and then cake, because it was lunchtime and I think it’s a reasonable bias that I support my university’s longevity. I mean, my degree would not be worth much if WSU keels over before its 119th.

Just because I was curious, there are no people in the world alive today who were around when WSU was born. The oldest person in the world right now is only 114 years old (though almost 115). She’s older than the Evergreen.

I was, however, aware of another reason today is special, and it gives me a certain amount of delight that they fall on the same day because it represents two of my favorite interests. I’ll leave that for the next post.

We had the TV rigged up to project on our white board for the game, but afterward it was a fun way to watch and enhance Cable 8. Victor set up the anchors with a lovely spinning bow tie and lapel flower. They had a Kahlo brow at one point and an elaborate mustache as well. The figure on the right is Not Chewbacca, and I’m not sure what purpose he served.

The photos aren’t good, but they give you an idea of how absurd it was.

I generally don’t like playing competitive games without knowing what they entail, because then I might lose. But since Allison was so excited about some trivia game related to a press kit she received today, I agreed to play. I was promised there would be three excellent prizes.

It was all about Indiana Jones movies, which I have never seen all the way through because there are too many skeletons. It was also all multiple choice, so I did what I always do in such situations and picked the most intelligent guess until I ran out of interest, and then guessed randomly. With the exception of two giveaway questions (In which movie does Indiana Jones not fight anyone? In which movie does someone want to kill Indiana Jones? None and all of the above, respectively, obviously), I didn’t know any of the answers.

I got 7 out of 10 right.

It was good enough for a third-place tie with Christina, behind Kevin Quinn (9/10) and Tyler Tjomsland (8/10). Christina did not want the remaining prize after Kevin and Tyler chose theirs, thereby saving us from a brutal, prolonged battle by lightsaber or high-pitched squabbling.

Ha ha. Victory and a prize.

I’ve been dealing with a lot of traumatic photographs recently because of my thesis. That is not the kind of horror I am talking about at all here. This is from last week when I was sending photos and quotes to the paper near Winthrop, and attaching them to the e-mail. One of the people I talked to was Monique, since I saw her out near the mall with her Coug gear, and I accidentally turned her picture to CMYK before uploading it to the e-mail. This produced terrifying results that sent me and Brian into fits of horrified giggles. It’s not so bad when I’m looking at it today, but still worth sharing. Look at it.

I’ve never watched a trial from beginning to end before, but today I got my chance. It’s a pretty good one so far, I guess, though it will probably go most of tomorrow, too.  It was just one case, so I don’t have a random cache of quotes like Jacob gets. I did get this for Least Necessary Question of a Witness:

Prosecuting attorney: You said it was about 1:56 when this happened, so was it dark that night?

Witness: Yes, it was.

I also had a woman sitting next to me comment that the Taser Cam video looked like a sonogram, and this came up while watching the video:

Prosecuting attorney: Is that your stomache we’re seeing in this scene?

Witness: Yes, unfortunately, it is.

The two people I saw arrested for DUIs Friday night were waiting for their turn in court, but I didn’t make a point to reintroduce myself.

Christina Watts won today’s Student Publications election for next fall’s Evergreen editor-in-chief. There was a lot of discussion about Christina and other candidate Andy Jones.

It will be a tough job, partly because it always is and partly because both candidates could use another semester or so to learn. But I know from experience you learn as you go along, and I’m sure it will all be fine. I picked Andy Jones to be Sports editor when he was a sophomore last spring and not ready, and he did very well. I chose Christina to be News editor when she was a sophomore this fall and not yet ready, and she did well. You learn as you go.

It’s strange to think it was me standing there a year ago giving a half-hearted presentation to the board after a week of exhausting conversations with Brian about how we wanted to do this. It’s been a good time, though I feel less attached to this year than last because being a senior combined with my tendency to be future-minded means I’ve been eyeing the door for months.

It’s still hard to let go of the Evergreen. I’ll try to step aside graciously, as I’ve already been trying to do this semester, but I’ve invested too much sweat and tears into this paper to be completely comfortable handing it over. Last year I remember feeling the top editors were not pleased when I was elected, but I think now it might have just been unease with anyone getting elected. No one is ever really ready for the job.

Christina told me I was giving her a harsh glare when she walked back into the conference room for the announcement. I didn’t mean to, but maybe I was. She’ll do very well.

Yesterday when I was talking to students for the Herald, a guy predicted the Cougars would win 67-48.  I glanced up from my notebook to give him a skeptical look.

“No, actually 67-55,” he said. “Just watch, it’s gonna happen. We’re due to break out.”

He wasn’t too far off the first time, just not quite optimistic enough. And it was great.

“There is nothing better in sports than watching the Cougars demolish their opponent,” Sports editor Mike Feigen said as we’re finishing up the paper for the night.

It was only too bad Belmont couldn’t finish it out against Duke, because that would have been a great upset.

Yesterday I answered a call in the newsroom mid-morning from a guy at The (Rock Hill, S.C.) Herald. They were looking to get a few random students to answer questions about the WSU vs. Winthrop game for a street talk-like feature in their paper. They wanted us to get students to call them and e-mail photos of themselves – you know, within the next few hours.

Yeah, students are really going to do that. So I offered to go talk to people and send their comments and photos. I like that sort of thing.

The first question I was supposed to ask seemed simple: “Winthrop is located in what city and state?”

No one knew. Eric Frampton guessed Connecticut. A girl who declined to give her name enthusiastically thought Oregon. I still couldn’t remember by the end.

There were other questions, too. It would be a more interesting story if I could find the published feature anywhere on their website. I’d like to see what the Winthrop kids said about us. Anyway, the game is soon and I’m nervous.

Another day that should have been devoted to my thesis was thwarted by phone calls and deadlines. I feel like I end up writing more than my share of last-minute stories with way too much backstory that the Evergreen somehow ignored for the past three years. It happened with the com school and now it happened with the laid-off WSU firefighters. For being a group of admirable predecessors, you guys apparently missed quite a bit. It makes me wonder what we’re missing now.

This is frustrating because I hate feeling like the whole story isn’t there. It feels like a disservice to the sources and the facts when you can’t include everything. I also hate trying to determine how much to simplify a complicated situation so it’s readable but not inaccurate.

Journalists have to be smart people. We have to learn quickly and absorb complicated information, and turn around and write about it quickly. In these complex stories, I find the only way I can keep things straight is by making a timeline. But it’s also encouraging, because even when my story isn’t perfect or even all that good, I know I do better than your average person and probably a lot of journalists.

Brief pouting: I don’t think Woodward and Bernstein had to listen to crummy office music while when they were put on hold.

Victor and Allison had the make posters that symbolized three things about them for an ads class, or something like that. So last night Victor asked me whether in all the pictures I’ve taken of him there was a decent silhouette from the back or front. It’s true that I have about a million pictures of Victor. He’s fun to photograph because he often puts odd things on his head and, like a good only child, he’s grown comfortable to having a camera pointed his direction. Just because I got done griping about how much else I have to do, I’m taking a few minutes to share my favorites:

The combination of covering cops this semester and reading “All the President’s Men” completely cured me of phone dread. Which is good, because there was only a short window for end-of-break moping before the news locked us all in again.

Yesterday I spent a frustrating amount of time trying to track down information on graffiti around campus during break. In the end I just tried to minimize holes and recommended it go on page 3, and I’m not even going to link it here. Still, it felt like hard news.

Today we finally got the finding letter from Student Conduct regarding a fraternity that lost recognition. It has all kind of great details about the alleged infractions, but it means another day of trying to get busy people on the phone with Christina only to have them tell us they don’t know anything.

Still, it’s kind of fun. The problem is I don’t have time to be a good journalist right now. I have a thesis and graduating to do, among other things like attending meetings for Brian and trying to find a job. There are so many things I want to do, and too many things that must be done whether I want to or not.

The New York Times has a rather scattered story about how major publications are dusting off their archives and getting the historical material online. They are seeing impressive reader interest, which may eventually get advertisers on board. I wonder how you get a job doing this, or maybe it’s what media companies are doing with the librarians and research assistants whose jobs became obsolete when Google appeared.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that I’m not crazy. Other people - including readers - are interested in this history stuff.

It’s that time of year again. Tonight will be a late and hectic one due to the ASWSU elections, though I haven’t felt the newsroom pulse rise much yet. It may be more low-key than past year since there are only two tickets, though I’m sure we’ll still be pushing deadline and having all sorts of fun with it. Here’s the editorial that was published Monday.

The photo is Scheller decked out in his campaigning uniform last Friday. Christina and I heard rumors of Cougar Security coming to break up a Jubilant Catfish Party cook-out, which turned out to be false. So I had my camera out.

Election night last year was fun, and as managing editor I was so genuinely impressed with the way the stories by Christina, Lynsi and Rikki captured the different feelings of the night. The photos were outstanding, too. I remember being so pleased.

And now, for the sake of memories that precede my own, photos from election night ‘06. Awww!

(I’m pretty sure Jacob should get credit for most of these. Yes?)

One of my favorite things about being the Evergreen cops reporter is calling Pullman Police Cmdr. Chris Tennant every Monday to go through the weekend’s ridiculous happenings. I like his sarcasm (”Oh look, another call from Mike’s”) and overall jadedness.

Today he called me out when I asked whether a subject transported to the hospital was just the usual.

“It’s getting kind of bad when you’ve only been doing this a couple months and it’s already a ‘regular detox,’” he said.

Those of us in the newsroom in Journalism 431 (Advanced News Editing) are required to make posters about sexual health, which meant a lot of awkward Google image searches and comments in the newsroom tonight.

Victor already finished his adorably suggestive vector poster, and you can see mine here.

I’m pretty pleased with myself because 1) I didn’t take forever like I usually do when designing, and 2) it’s not due until Thursday, which easily makes this the earliest I’ve finished a homework assignment since at least the seventh grade.

I used a combination of InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop with a scanned condom from the newsroom. Brian put his “Most Likely to Break Stuff” title to work by prying open our bizarre little vending machine that’s been in the editor’s office since last year. It was originally part of our April Fool’s Day prank for Student Publications Manager Al Donnelly, so naturally it was full of tea bags, random junk and condoms. Last year’s graphics manager found it near a dumpster with the keys, but apparently he took the keys when he graduated. Victor had one unsuccessful and irritatingly noisy evening last semester trying to jiggle the lock open, but Brian took the screwdriver I usually keep as a favorite newsroom weapon and had the thing open in no time.

There were also a few condoms available that Brian stashed in the videocassette box for old Poynter tapes for some reason, but that would’ve been too easy.

I also made Alicia scan the condom at like 900 dpi, which was definitely overkill, but originally I was going to make the image a lot bigger.

Weirder projects have been completed in the newsroom, but this was a decent effort all around.

Those are really the only things I’ve been wanting all week while doing the raw food diet. So today I eased back into being normal with a brunch of broccoli (with a little salad dressing), cereal with soymilk and a container of tapioca pudding. It was delicious.

Before that I went running and stopped by the Rec Center for my end-of-the-week weigh-in. I was down 4.5 or 5 pounds from the beginning of the week, which is pretty negligible but would add up if I stuck with it, I suppose. Raw food people say it takes at least two weeks to notice a difference in energy levels, so my sample is clearly too short, but overall I didn’t notice any difference from just eating lightly for a week without limiting the type of food. The difficulty I had running this morning was like a flashback to desperate days freshman year.

The benefit of the whole thing was it forced me to pack healthy snacks for the day, and it wasn’t nearly the inconvenience I expected. Cutting celery in the morning and getting to class on time are not mutually exclusive. And apples are delicious, even this time of year. Half the time at the newsroom I’m too busy to care what I’m eating, so a little preparation helps a lot.

Overall I would recommend this diet to other people, especially just for a day or two to make you feel free of processed, fatty junk. I’m still intrigued by the people who make this a lifestyle, but not particularly interested in hopping aboard.

Oh, and I’m out of string cheese, which is why I didn’t also include that on my lunch menu.

I had very little time but quite a bit of fun writing this mini-feature on people at WSU who were born on Feb. 29. President Floyd was really surprised we knew about him technically being a leap day baby, and quite honestly I don’t remember when it came up or how we knew. It made me smug anyway.

This brings up another point, which is that I never proof-read my stories on days as busy as this one.  I usually don’t read them until a few days after they’re published because I have a weird anxiety about it. I did just read this one over, and it reminded me that I don’t do it because then I see a dozen little things with wording or arrangement that I wish I could change.

Photo by Tyler Tjomsland/Daily Evergreen

Here’s the story. I purposely overwrote it because the whole thing was so silly, and it needed a different tone to compete with an ever-popular fraternity-in-trouble story.

This is just an annotated roundup of ridiculous things I helped bring into existence. I will accept limited credit/blame:

With Dan eating all orange food this week and Victor eating green, red and white, I suggested there were lots of food items they could effectively share.

Victor was telling me a funny story one day that led to a conversation about the internet’s effect on English, and I told him he should turn it into a column. (And that’s me quoted in the top left house ad on this page.)

Nick came up with the first and second venue videos on his own (though encouraged by my amusement). But then last Thursday he was talking about going to Beasley two hours before the game and I suggested he make a third installment.

I’ve also been a fan of Jacob’s absurdly dull videos ever since the storm in Ireland. When in Aberdeen we drove near the courthouse where he spends many hours and I facetiously told him he should make a video about it. My theory that Jacob is trying to outdo himself in mundaneness surely motivated this most recent video.

Last night Nick was like, “I can’t think of what else to put on my blog.” I was like, “Just put up more random stuff like the rest of us.” Later he was telling me how one of his fellow sportwriters used to work at the Evergreen, and it was a nice little anecdote so I said he should post it.

I coined the term “rogue quotes” last semester when our InDesign template somehow started putting in the wrong type of quotation marks. So I was pleased when I realized tonight that people in the newsroom now use that as a standard designing term.

There are more, but that is plenty for now. I just needed a break from the rest of everything.

Today I’m writing a story about how Pullman Police are going around giving warnings to houses on College Hill with “accumulated party trash.” For being a fairly dull premise, it’s turning out to be an interesting story. We met one fellow who answered the door in his girlfriend’s pink bathrobe last Sunday. He re-enacted the scene for me and photographer Tyler Tjomsland.

Later I asked Sgt. Sam Sorem about it.

“I guess I didn’t think it was a blazing pink,” Sorem said. “I would consider it more of a shade of red.”

The title basically says it all. I didn’t really think about it, but I had a few pieces of broccoli while I was packing up this morning. On the walk to campus, which is my typical time for most productive thinking, I thought about how few people worldwide ate broccoli and nothing else for breakfast. I also thought about how, even with all the varied eating habits I’ve had, eating broccoli for breakfast is something I’d never done before.

I was, yes, looking at my own blog this morning when I noticed the little pop-up link window for Christina’s Special K diet gave an interesting perspective. That’s on the left, with the website that actually shows up from the link on the right. Sometimes the internet is smarter than I like to think.

As for me, Day 2 gave me license to be a bit snippy at the other editors, since I am quite hungry. My heart rate is higher than usual, but that may have more to do with this Spokesman-Review article that inexplicably got full-front treatment. I’ve been following those same issues and numbers, and there will be a large story in the Evergreen next week addressing similar questions of whether violence is rising on College Hill.

Which makes my life that much more complicated this week. I’m also writing stories for Thursday and Friday, taking two exams, and trying to finish a number of smaller tasks. There’s also the looming citadel that is my thesis.

No, we’re not returning to the days of 14-hour Sports Weekend ordeals. It’s an even more concrete proof that every editor at the Evergreen enjoys suffering to a certain extent: We’re all doing “fad diets” for a week.

Since we’re all doing different ones, this will probably just make us hungry and crabby at each other. I am already coveting Christina’s Special K that she’s complaining about. Or Victor, who’s eating only foods that are red, green or white (but not Italian, Mexican or Hungarian).

I’m eating raw. Today is Day 1. This is a maintainable, if somewhat obscure, way of eating. So I don’t expect too many problems, except that the first week or two acts as a detox period. There are a few reasons I expect this to be relatively easy:

• I already eat vegetarian, and I like a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.
• I don’t cook anyway, mostly because I don’t have time or I’m too impatient.
• I won’t feel deprived of dressings, sauces, dips or other condiments because I don’t like those anyway.
• I’m in the mood for bananas. This is actually quite unusual. It’s not that I dislike bananas, I’m just never really hungry for them except on rare occasions. Like now.
• Everything I’ve read about this is people complaining it’s too sweet. To me, too sweet is eating nothing but conversation hearts all day long. Or remember when I went on a Splenda kick freshman year? This kind of sweet should suit me fine.

And don’t worry, Mama, I’m taking my vitamins.