March 15, 2012 A one man band. That is what journalists who do it all are called. Over what is termed Spring Break for this publication three dedicated journalists ran the show while the rest of us were away from the newsroom. Amber Ooley and Alicia Lebens, two of our copy editors, and Lauren Renneke, our newsroom liaison, kept the publication up and afloat.
Without the help of the art desk and the web desk these three were able to run the publication by doing all the jobs themselves. The art desk is responsible for finding art for articles, creating logos and graphics for stories, as well as videos and thumbnails for links and pages. The web desk is responsible for putting the pieces together online.hyperlink stories, connect them with previous articles, link to other sites, and make sure all the pages were up, running and have all the necessary plugins and widgets. Then they hit publish and it goes out onto the web.
These three women communicated via internet alone. They never met in person which is completely out of the normal for the newsroom. Instead of being in one place and acting as a conjoined mind they were in many different places and yet still were able to act as one mind. Renneke realized that having a few people do everything makes it more complicated than having every desk and every person behind this publication working on it making it go smoothly.
Ooley realized how important the art desk is to this publication and how difficult it is to fill the pages without that desk. However, Renneke had a bit of a moment of concern when she went to publish everything and realized she might have screwed up the moving splash page. Lebens stepped in and saved the day, showing her that all they had to do was go in and change the images. Teamwork was what got these ladies through and made this publication a success.
Staying on the same page with everyone else made it a continuous one.
Alexa McIndoe talks about web troubles after the Spring Break publication and keeping everyone on the same page.