Sunday afternoon I sent the special Fall Sports Preview tab (as in tabloid format) to the printer, easily within deadline. It made for a hectic week, but I'm pleased with how the section turned out. Instead of 16 pages, it ended up being 12 pages. As a result, I held one article for use in the Sports section this week.
I had only one real crisis during the project. That was when I went to the photo shoot for the cover of the tab. I was going to shoot an informal group photo of the captains from each sport--from both schools. The shoot was Friday at 8 a.m. at the school 15 miles away. After talking to the school athletic directors and coaches multiple times, I had kids from only one school show up--the kids from the other school. One girl from the delinquent school was there. I snagged a few others who were at a practice, but I didn't have enough to get a usable photo.
So I spent the rest of the morning on Plan B, getting sports equipment for a for still-life photo. It all ended up OK, but frustrating nonetheless.
Everything in the tab was my responsibility: the writing, the photos, the layout, even the proofreading. Wednesday was a long day, more than six hours of taking individual mug shots, team photos and making sure I got all the names right.
This being my second year on the tab, I found it a whole lot easier than it was last year. When I did this a year ago, I was meeting all the coaches as I worked on the stories for the tab. And when everything went to the printer and I "debriefed" with my editor, I enjoyed the satisfaction of a job well done.
(Now I've got to come up with some other stories to fill the Sports section. Problem is that nothing's going on.)
Posted by JRC at August 23, 2004 01:09 PM | TrackBack