They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. I lost my mind somewhere between Issue 25 of the Daily 49er and this, our final issue of the semester.
My last issue before graduating.
Oh, and I think my brain may be lodged somewhere between the nap couch cushions in the newsroom, as joining the staff has stolen countless hours of sleep.
“When I agreed to join this staff, I had no idea what I was getting myself into in the absolute best of ways,” Assistant News Editor and magical hair vixen Micayla Vermeeren said. “I knew I would be writing a ton and learning a lot along the way, but I never once expected the people around me to become so important to me in such a short amount of time.”
Any staff member of the Daily 49er can tell you that it’s not the excellent pay that keeps you around.
It’s the love for the people, both those in the stories we cover and those I proudly called my co-workers for one more night.
A good news story can make your day, but it is the people that leads a person to willing insanity. While training the new staff for next semester, the nagging reminder that “I am graduating, I am graduating, I am graduating” is knocking around in the back of my mind with a few loose screws.
“…At times it felt like we, as individuals and as a staff, were on a sinking ship,” Opinions Editor and soon-to-be Print Managing Editor Madison D’Ornellas said. “But at least we were all on the same rigging.”
Ahoy, desk-mateys.
It’s easy to rationalize student newspaper insanity when you’re working with some of your favorite people. Between the constant slew of missed reporter deadlines and coffee runs, a family is born. We rise from the ashes of content mayhem to produce something that alarmingly resembles a newspaper, and a damn good one if I do say so myself.
It’s coverage of things, like the attacks in Paris, that make all those dropped stories and missed hours of sleep only minor sacrifices. And believe me, only sleeping for three hours the night before you have to jump from multiple internships, to multiple jobs and classes often seems like huge sacrifice.
And just when you’re ready to enjoy your one-day weekend, breaking news pokes you until you wake out of a something close to a coma. When the news broke that a California State University, Long Beach student died during the Paris attacks, 49er staff crawled out of the woodwork to honor those who lost their lives, including Nohemi.
“There were all these big media companies and there we are taking notes and hustling to get interviews,” Assistant News Editor Abilene Carrillo said, reflecting the coverage of Nohemi’s vigil. “We might be smaller but we have heart! It was late, we were hungry, tired and trying to comprehend everything that was happening so quickly but that Monday newspaper was my favorite by far.”
And we’ve had several issues to relish in, reminding us of why we stuck around to repeat the insanity for 58 consecutive issues. Thanks to Design Editor Emilio Aldea, the 49er has pushed boundaries in design and how readers perceive us.
Covers like the Dec. 2 San Bernardino coverage, or his on-the-fly illustrations for the first GOP debate allows the newspaper to take risks and keep the public engaged in an era where print journalism is tanking as fast as my GPA this semester.
As I leave the Daily 49er, it is the on-the-spot thinking that I will take with me.
I knew very little about what it takes to be a journalist, let alone an editor before joining the staff. Everyday you learn something new. The paper is a living organism and I am a parasite, absorbing as much knowledge as I can before I part. All professor qualifications aside, I confidently attribute the majority of my working knowledge as a journalist to the Daily 49er.
“Never would I thought how being in the Daily 49er would make me much more active in using my voice about certain subjects outside of my job,” Photo Editor (and possible robot alien) Trang Le said.
Working for a daily paper pushes you outside your comfort zones. You may not always feel comfortable covering certain subjects, but the Daily 49er trains its staff to be journalists first.
It’s a tough pill to swallow, but we’re professionals, damn it.
After all, in the course of the semester our staff has covered genocides, massacres, suicides and Donald Trump.
“Despite what I thought about the man, it was a surreal experience being in the midst of a large presidential campaign,” Multimedia Managing Editor and graduating senior Michael Ares said in reference to Trump’s visit to USS Iowa in San Pedro in September. “It was quite possibly the biggest event that our school got to be a part of and provide coverage for.”
And that’s what makes us so scrappy.
Despite our minimal manpower, we fight to break stories before local publications, like University President Jane Close Conoley’s smoking ban. We elbow our way into the proverbial cesspool of seasoned journalists, trying to bring the highest quality of reporting to the campus body.
“The moments when the staff became greater than the sum of its parts,” as Arts & Life Editor and vocab snob, et al Kevin Flores so eloquently put it, keeps us going.
Teamwork makes the dream work.
It was there, somewhere between the staff’s teamwork to repeatedly berated for my arguably awful puns and cheap-shot play-on-words, and sharing the last night’s cigarettes with Editor-in-chief Greg Diaz, I’ve grown quite fond the newsroom and the editor lifestyle.
You can’t quite help considering the people you spend 15-plus hours of the waking day with an extended family. And I mean, come on, have you seen our staff photo, dear readers?
Who wouldn’t want to wrestle with a proverbial straight jacket for a group like that?
this article made my Adam’s apple tighten. We share a final goodbye to this awesome school. Two years passed to quick, just yesterday I was in orientation. Now, I am done, we are done. Graduation is at our feet, just as how we were told when our feet first stepped on campus. Thank you CSULB!