Category Archive

Today at work I explained to a caller how the Supreme Court and the Idaho state Supreme Court are different. Then I explained precedent and how the Supreme Court will often look to state decisions but are not bound by them, since many cases the Supreme Courts takes originate from disputes between states in the first place. Then I explained separation of powers at the federal level. Then I was asked whether a Washington state Supreme Court justice could be impeached by an initiative, and I explained that different states have different systems of selecting their justices and … okay I was stumped.

It was like an exam from Poli Sci 404, only with Wikipedia available to help. In turns out justices in both Idaho and Washington are elected to six-year terms. According to the judiciary section of the Washington state Constitution, justices cannot be recalled like other public officials.

I’ve also decided that passion becomes a liability precisely at the point where it prevents a person from learning new information. Fortunately this caller was reasonable and thanked me before hanging up as a citizen better educated to promote out his agenda, whatever it is.

I was thinking about this today because of Jacob’s post about law books, and how much of the information I learned in classes has actually been relevant to the phone answering part of my job. I’ve explained to callers the concept of fair use and copyright law, statutes of limitations, how a bill becomes a law on the state and national level, Washington state landlord-tenant law, and limits to the First Amendment.

My education, however, did not properly prepare me for figuring out why the golf tournament wasn’t showing up on the right channel of old ladies’ televisions.

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.

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.

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.