The Daily staff. Picture taken by bird.
I’m late with everything, so it only makes sense that about a month after the fact that a month after the fact, I dust off the tattered old blog and mention that the Spartan Daily has gone to bed.
I’m not sure what held me up. Last semester, I posted it not too long after it ended. But then, last semester I was filled with warm fuzzies about how I hated the idea of leaving the cursed Daily. To remedy this, I became a Student Culture editor such that I might not miss the rag.
It was quite an experience, I’d be forced to say. Firsthand, I adventured through begging writers to take stories and sticking around the Daily for the the sort of late nights that, as a writer, I had noticed of the last batch of editors with just a sort of passing sympathy.
Now I lived it, brother. I skated with manic fury toward the last train any number of times, occasionally missing it and getting a ride from mild-mannered executive editor Dave.
I can’t believe I ever used to think a late school day consisted of leaving at 7pm. It’s inconceivable now. When I do leave school before 2am the next day, I get this sort of uneasy feeling, like something’s pretty wrong with the universe.
I’ve adopted the newsroom as my home. It houses my jogging apparel, my drinking bird, and Turbo (my Go-bot, who has been missing for a bit. $2 reward if found). In between classes, I could be found in the newsroom at my desk, looking up naked pictures of Britney Spears on the Internet (and occasionally doing homework or sipping coffee.)
The coffee maker is still the inconsistent and therefor lovable dream I remembered it as — Oh the glory of a mechanism that takes three hours to drip a pot of java.
Who should I mention? Colleen, who worked next to me, waged with me the bad 80’s music war and accompanied me for $2 beer and pizza each Tuesday before the budget meeting? Kim, co-student culture editor, who I’m pretty sure is still plotting my death? Mark, keeper of the post-it board? Tommy of the unshakably smiling disposition? John, the lurker journalist extraordinaire? Carlos, the maniac whose love for pictures and layout kept me at the Daily past anyone’s bedtime pretty often? Or perhaps Matt and Megan, the design freaks, or Sarah and Chris, the scrupulous copy editors? Dina?
Naw, I’m just not going to mention anyone, ’cause it would take a whole paragraph. And I won’t mention Bianca, the 21-looking 29-year-old who somehow managed to write a bunch of hard-hitting news stories in spite of her two or three kids, who graced the newsroom every now and again. Won’t mention Chris, tall mellow fellow, or Adam the sarcastic, or Adam the Star Trek expert (he even knows what those fuzzy dots are called), or X the eloquent, Andrea the smiley, Allie the odd (but in a good way), Kelly Quiet, Danielle the story sleeper, Marcos the video game coorespondent, Selma the tall, Ya-an the sweet, Kaajal who looked after my drinking bird, Jason with the Engish accent, Rie with the nice sentences, Elisha the Republican (every newsroom needs one), Corrine who made herself scarce, Richard who made himself scarcer, or Pete of the loud colors. Or Ellis, the political guy.
The reason I didn’t mention any of those people is that I don’t mention people in the blog. It makes for a boring blog full of crap like “so, my cat threw up today, then I saw Jamie, blah blah blah me me me.”
As I was saying before I didn’t mention anyone, I became an editor and went through all that agony because I got those warm fuzzies about leaving the daily. And now I’ve gone and done it again as a Copy editor. What a damn fool. Stupid warm fuzzies. Cheers.
Tags: SJSU, Spartan Daily Fall 08
