4:45 p.m. Rachel orders me to “commence a liveblog.” And thus, we begin.
4:50 p.m. Chief Copy Editor Marisa Ikert arrives with snacks. And there was much rejoicing.
4:57 p.m. Sex Columnist Spencer Wharton arrives with chips for our salsa.
4:58 p.m. Rachel: “I should try to have a snark-free production night.” Spencer: “You would die.”
5:02 p.m. Rachel: “I would say that I’m not a hipster, but I’m wearing purple pants.”
5:07 p.m. Rachel re-articulates her bribe to provide us with Sweet Basil pizza if we finish production by 11 p.m. There is renewed vigor in the newsroom.
5:11 p.m. Rachel: “I’m going to attempt to stop talking about my bras long enough to hold this meeting.”
5:15 p.m. The web team meeting has now devolved into a discussion of dollar store pregnancy tests.
5:35 p.m. Rachel checks off the Backpage, and Production Manager Sean McNulty starts the evening’s musical accompaniment.
5:37 p.m. Feature Editor Adam Brayton arrives with pizza from Big Cheese’s Customer Appreciation Night.
7:05 p.m. Things are progressing nicely in a quiet newsroom while Rachel and Blair are away at a Town Hall meeting, with three pages ready for copy edit. Sports, however, is not sharing in this smooth sailing. Four computer crashes and inexplicable save fails later, Sports Production Assistant Sandra and Sports Editor Pam start over on layout. Again. Fifth time’s the charm, right?
7:10 p.m. Rachel and Hannah Bauer, our Advertising Manager walk in, discussing the merits (and demerits) of Town Hall. The conversation soon digresses into pizza. Rachel: “Any pizza is a personal pizza if you try hard and believe in yourself.”
7:30 p.m. Hannah decides to leave, citing the inexplicable need to be rude and disruptive whenever she’s in the newsroom as her reason for departing.
7:32 p.m. Blair walks in, stopping Hannah in her tracks. She wraps her head in a purple scarf as she and Rachel examine the Victoria’s Secret catalog and chat with the general newsroom.
7:33 p.m. Blair claims that all he could bring back from Town Hall was a small half-eaten bowl of guacamole. We determine that he must be a baby bird to make a food-stealing effort that pathetic.
8:15 p.m. There will be a giant peacock on the front page! This news, and amazing fuzziness of Libby’s fleece pants, liven a corner of the newsroom.
8:32 p.m. Pushing away a reportedly smelly plate of food on the table, Copy Editor Matthew goes on a passionate rant against “Taste of Reid,” as he calls it. Apparently it all tastes the same. He refuses to hear contrary opinions.
9:46 p.m. First PDF is done. Rachel re-iterates that this trend of being done early is going to continue through the rest of the year.
10:11 p.m. Wait, we’re PDFing our last pages?!?!?! I think we have reached a new level of awesome.
11:00 p.m. All PDFs done. BOOM.
