So much for the sunshine. It was nice while it lasted.
In other news, those of you who are regular readers have noticed that, as of our last issue, we’ve been back in our full 12-page glory.
Deadlines (the staff hates that word now) still aren’t operating as smoothly as I’d like them to be, but there has been a significant improvement in the way things are getting done. Having articles in earlier helps enormously when we’re staring down those blank pages in InDesign, trying to figure out how in the world we’re not only going to make everything fit, but how we could possibly get it looking good.
Having a four-page issue actually helped us with this in a number of ways. The week we put out the four-pager, we had an incredible amount of extra time to nitpick about details. We got to scour every inch of every page, looking for mistakes and things we could do better next time. We weren’t happy putting out such a weak paper, but it did teach us a lot.
Just one of the things learned, for example, was a way to put a sort of “shadow” behind text to make it easier to read against photos and gray boxes. Without the extra time, we never would have considered it, but now that we know how to do it we can start using it more often.
Unfortunately, the news isn’t all fantastic. We ended up with almost zero new content for last week’s online edition, mostly because apparently there was a trip to SF State [check that fact] planned the day of production. That, plus myself being out sick Monday, meant that very little got done, and once everyone left there was basically no hope.
But we’re doing our best to make up for the deficit with this issue. Hope you all enjoy it, and see you next week.