Funny thing is, editors rarely get the chance to write. Over the course of the past 12 months, I think I scraped together a grand total of about 5 bylines and perhaps a couple of columns and editor's notes to boot.
For a majority of the past year, I had the luxury of sitting on the opposite side of the desk, talking to reporters, writing e-mails, running budget and attempting to set deadlines that would get this campus rag of ours to bed sometime before 5 a.m. every morning.
One-hundred and forty-nine issues later, the clock is ticking down on this volume and I'm struggling to chalk up one final byline that can somehow capture the major lessons learned during what has been a wonderful, stressful and unforgettable experience at the editor's desk. This is the time of year when you're supposed to take a step back from the daily grind, look out fondly at the Duke Chapel through the windows of The Chronicle office and bang out a column to say something about how it was a hell of a ride and how you wish you could do it all again, but now you're ready to move on.
Easy, right? Well, not quite. It's a lot easier to set deadlines than to write on them.
What I have learned this year, though, is that in the wonderful world of newspapers, it's all about times and numbers. When we skeleton The Chronicle's pages at 5:30 p.m. every night, we talk about page lengths, word counts and column widths. During the past year, I calculated that I have walked up the two flights of stairs to 301 Flowers more than 900 times. I have had the opportunity to copyedit close to a thousand articles, read 12,461 e-mails (the inbox hasn't been cleaned yet), imbibed about 2,200 caffeinated beverages, eaten around 370 meals in the office and missed about 9 classes (a gross underestimate, but spring semester grades are still pending). The latest we finished a paper this year was 6:15 a.m.; the earliest, 11:58 p.m.
OK, so I've come to accept the fact that I can't describe the past 12 months in 600-750 words. These "final" columns are always underwhelming, and midnight trips to Wilmington, servers crashing at 4 a.m., less-than-tempered critics, Chronicle semiformals, speeding tickets and late-night romps through the Duke Gardens simply don't fit neatly into newsprint. But the experience has opened my eyes to this thing called journalism.
During the past year, the world of times and numbers was magnified tenfold by the lacrosse case. As student journalists covering the story on the ground, we struggled to find the blurry balance between "student" and "journalist," while taking a crash course in Journalism Ethics 101. We watched as once-revered major media outlets swooped down and fumbled coverage of what has come to be termed the "Lacrosse Scandal" in the attempt to fit square pegs into round holes. While waiting outside the Durham County Court House last May, the words of a burly cameraman from a national news network stuck with me. "What keeps me going is the adrenaline rush you get," he told me between bites of his Subway sandwich.
I have seen first-hand that when the modern media are pressured to turn around stories in a matter of hours and high ratings go to those who get the almighty scoop, regardless of factual grounding and ethical reporting, something important is lost.
I have become disenamored with the world of modern American media this past year, but I have also gained a renewed view of what journalism can be. The vision of the hard-living reporters with their visors and press passes who chain smoke behind their typewriters as they dig tirelessly to get to the bottom of things comes to mind. I'm speaking here of the brusque-toned Ben Bradlees of the world, who speak about a different kind of adrenaline rush than that cameraman outside the court house.
"I miss the excitement of the stories that quicken your pulse," Bradlee-former executive editor of the Washington Post-wrote in the conclusion to his memoir. "That's when a newspaperman can get on with the job he was born to do. Not many of us were lucky enough to get that exhilarating opportunity. Again and again and again."
When "Scotty" Reston, one of the great New York Times reporters of our age, titled his memories "Deadline," he noted that although the word has a negative connotation, he views the term in a positive and optimistic light. For Reston, deadlines and numbers were the impetus that pushed him to work a little bit harder and live what Bradlee would call "a good life."
It's hard to let this editor experience go and to leave the world of deadlines and numbers for the world of books and homework once more. Quite frankly, I don't think there's anything that can replicate the experience and excitement of living in the day-to-day as a core team of editors works together countless hours to produce our "Daily Miracle" each night.
This year certainly has been a hell of a ride, and as I look out on the Duke Chapel through my office window right now, I would say that I would do it all again in a second if I could. But now deadline's approaching, and Volume 102's 149th issue needs to go to bed sometime before 5 a.m.
At this surreal moment, I have to say that I will miss it all dearly, but I have enjoyed a good life for a year. And I'm thankful for that.
Ryan McCartney is a Trinity junior and editor of The Chronicle. Like his predecessors, he aches with the knowledge that he'll never be either again.
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