When I look through my glassy enclosure into the water-free world surrounding me, I see big, human eyes staring at me and fingers pointing. “”Is he dead?”” they always ask.
No, you idiots. I’m a beta. We like to conserve energy, unlike the reporters, designers, photographers and editors who are constantly rushing around the Arizona Daily Wildcat newsroom, hustling and bustling and burning calories like there’s no tomorrow.
The worst thing is when they move me from one side of the newsroom to the nextð – like tankquakes are fun for anyone. One minute I’m in the editor-in-chief’s office, chilling to Marilyn Manson like any normal fish. Then I’m suddenly in the arts editor’s cubicle, sloshing around and feeling like I’m going to vomit – if I could vomit.
From where I sit I can see a lot. The photographers come and go, loading pictures onto the photo chief’s computer. A few designers come in and see which pages are ready to go into In-Design. The arts editor and her assistant eat candy and listen to some bad New Kids on The Block CD. One of the arts reporters comes in to hand in her story, and the arts editor goes over it with her – reading it aloud, marking all over it with a red pen and giving feedback.
I hear the sports reporters behind me, watching some music video on YouTube while they wait for their pages to come out of design. Unfortunately, I now have the phrase, “”what what, in the butt”” stuck in my little brain. Oh geez.
News reporters pop in, type their stories up and turn them in to the news editor, rushing to meet tight deadlines.
The managing editor comes back from checking e-mail. He just received a couple of illustrations to accompany tomorrow’s stories.
During all of this, the copy chief directs the copy editors to start scrutinizing tomorrow’s articles, checking for fact errors, misspelled names and wrong phone numbers. Along the way, these witty English majors look at grammar and syntax.
The multimedia editor comes in and starts interviewing a sports reporter for a podcast. The whole desk pitches in while she interviews him.
The newsroom has a warm, bubbly atmosphere even though there’s serious work in producing the daily news.
Even though the editor-in-chief stays here until 4 a.m. sometimes, keeping me awake for hours, I have a warm and tingly spot in my abdomen for the Wildcat staff.
