After all the frustration and last minute work last weekend putting together our stories, we thought for sure, this week would go more smoothly. After all, our template couldn't crash again as it did last weekend, right?
Following up on Karla's story about her abortion, we heard that a classmate had once been in rehab and wondered if a) he would share and b) if there was anything of use in the story. Ava spent ten minutes with him and after we read the results, we asked him for an hour. We think his is an important story. We hope to continue to report on college students because the mainstream press tends to ignore us as a group and as individuals.
Feeling a little cocky that we'd nailed down our news story, we went to work on other features.
The Common Ills and Shirley helped us without our samples of the poetry of Anne Sexton and the week seemed to be falling into place. We'd all agreed that our editorial would be the last thing we'd work on so it wouldn't be old by the time it went up Sunday.
The TV beat fell in place when a reader in Texas forwarded us an e-mail from his Congress person (it's not a private e-mail) and asked us to weigh in on the networks' morning "news" shows.
But then, like a lot of people, we needed to make our voices heard on Thursday and we fell behind in working on this issue. As we scrambled to meet deadlines and pass each story among the five of us so that everyone could add their input, we quickly realized that we wouldn't be able to guarantee a non-typo edition. (That was really important to Ty.) We also realized that we were going to have to beg and plead from Kat and The Common Ills again to see if we could run another of Kat's Korner. (They kindly agreed.)
Next week, we'll also begin running letters. We'd hoped to do that this week but as Saturday faded into Sunday, it's one of the features we'd wanted that had to get tossed aside for this week.
We're a little more organized for next week's Sunday Review (or we think we are right now) and hope to have a feature dealing with technology and one with the visual arts. (Both are pieces that will be coming from outside the five of us.) We'll also be doing an interview with Rebecca Winters of the web site Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude. So barring the need for participating in any demonstrations, we're crossing our fingers that next week will go more smoothly.
But this week was a mad scramble and we want to think CI of The Common Ills for once again acting as a sounding board in the early morning hours of Sunday.