Tarabytes - The (Mis)adventures of a Newsroom Assistant

I picked up "Courage and Consequence" by Karl Rove the other day, but today was the first time I got to crack it open. :D


I've read the first chapter, and so far I love it. Like a lot.


I had no idea that Mr. Rove had been through so much. I only knew a few fuzzy details about his personal life, and I really appreciate the fact that he's willing to open up the way he did in his book.

When I heard a few months ago that Coach was putting in an outlet store at the Centralia Outlet Mall, I was kinda excited. Hopeful, even.

When the time came for The Chronicle to write a preview story about Coach, something odd happened: Coach would not talk.

On Friday, the opening day, I wandered over to the Coach Outlet to see what all the mystery was about. There must be something awesome there, right?

Well, it was a store. With bags and stuff.

Don't get me wrong. I love Coach bags. I used to go to Coach stores in Portland, Ore., and marvel over the shoes and bags. I just didn't get the same feeling here.

After pausing a moment to take in the atmosphere of the store, it felt like people were lining up to buy $250 handbags in a cafeteria. The magic of the typical Coach store just was not present. 

What was there, however, was a crapload of customers, as evidenced by my photo above. I really hope that the addition of "higher-end" outlets to the Centralia Outlet Mall will give people outside of our community a reason to stop by and see us.

That's right folks. It's still deadline in this newsroom, and I'm blogging from the front lines of the war.

The reporters are busy typing away at their stories, hoping to squeeze that last bit of information into their story. 

The editors are going over photos for the day, murmuring words of approval or disapproval.

The page designers are working as fast as they can to produce the beautiful copy they produce.

The newsroom assistant is blogging.

Oops.

But seriously, a dear friend of mine made me realize that most people don't really know what happens in the morning at a local daily newspaper. It's really busy here in the mornings!

Some days are busier than others, of course. On days that I have stuff to turn in, I'm busy running over the copy I've written, fixing any errors ...

(Pause while laying out pages)

...and then there's mornings like today where I get to hop on the design desk and make pretties.

I'm still waiting on Sirens so I can put it on Records. ;)

It's in. Gotta go!

This weekend I took a trip down to Portland, Ore., to go to my sister's engagement party.

She looked so happy and glowing and beautiful! She'll make a beautiful bride. I wish them many years of happiness and luck.

I stayed at The Nines hotel, and I really, really, really loved it there. If I had eleventy billion dollars, I would totally move in there. It's pretty friggin sweet.

I ate at Brasserie Montmarte, a super hip jazz club. The charcuterie was a big thumbs up, and it was charming that they offered Voodoo Doughnuts. The jazz quartet there was amazing. I wish I would have caught their name.

I thought I was going to die last night in an elevator. This makes two near-death (okay, one) experiences this week!

Note to self: Find out why the Grim Reaper has taken an interest in me.

This time it was taking an elevator from the 9th floor to the lobby. Now that may seem pretty innocent, but last night there was a winter gala happenin' on the 6th floor of the hotel. A crapload of very inebriated guys got on to the elevator (you could totally smell the liquor). A crapload in this case = about 12.

The elevator lurched. So did my stomach. Rinse and repeat about four times.

That's the point when I started screaming not-so-polite phrases at them about opening the doors. 

Most people say when they think they're going die that their life flashes before their eyes.

All I could think of was "I don't want to die in an elevator full of drunk guys. My family might think something was off about the circumstances."

I'm not quite sure what that says about me, but *shrugs*.

I picked up some pastrami, bialies and knish from  Kenny & Zuke's Delicatessen for the boys at work. I hope they enjoy them. :)

Now it's time for me to rest. I'm tired from my mini-vaca.

Ate out today with the editors. It was like I was almost cool for a second.

Then I realized I was eating a free Grand Slam at Denny's, and there's no way to be cool at Denny's when you're over 21 or aren't nursing a hangover.

The newsroom is full of reporters again since we hired two new guys in the past few weeks. I actually had to say "Excuse me" to get by someone yesterday. It's awesome!

I'm finally moving today! I'll be four blocks from work, which means I can stay up later and get up later. I'm quite happy about that. I'll also have cable internet which means I can go back to playing some games again.

Hello, World of Warcraft. You've been away for a while. What's that you say? New stuff?

Don't mind if I do.
 

The Comcast cable guy is here busily working on my lines, so hopefully I will soon be updating this blog from a 100,000% faster internet connection.

On the downside, apparently we were getting cable in a not-so-kosher way, and that's going away. We're perfectly OK with that, though! Most of what we want to watch can either be streamed or viewed the next day on adultswim.com or Hulu.

I'm currently using my cell phone, and I'm not too jazzed about the connection speed on it. But it works, so I can't complain too much.

I've progressed through "Journalism Next" by Mark Briggs through Chapter 2 (Advanced Blogging), and I'm really excited to start applying some of the concepts on this blog.

This book has been very informative so far, even to someone as into the web as I am. If you haven't at least looked at it, please check out Briggs' blog, Journalism 2.0.

The whole SEO (search engine optimization) thing needs further exploration though. I'm not too clear on the topic, and I'd really like to make friends with it.

Also, I'm hungry. My stomach is growling.