I got to take my first shot at designing pages today!
WOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Like I pseudo-prophesied on Tuesday night, I forgot almost everything that Sandra showed me during our little learning session. Well, let me be a little more specific. I remembered most of it, meaning that I remembered that it happened and I remembered what to do once something happened; but as for opening certain templates...
I wasn't too great at that part. To add to the difficulty, the page I got apparently had a very strange ad stack (the composition of the advertisements) on it. I'm not familiar enough with ads and how they usually look to be able to know how weird it was, but in the end, Sandra had to help me out with making things fit (ie. adding some filler).
That's another thing that makes it hard for interns -- one of the things you learn while becoming a veteran at a paper is where everything is. I, only having been here since late January, know where almost nothing is. It took me about forty-five minutes to do the obits page earlier, but the biggest reason for that was my wandering around the editorial folders trying to remember where templates and mugs were. Yeah, I know, it would be a lot easier and a lot faster to simply ask.
But if I don't figure it out myself, or get made a fool of in the process, I won't remember anything. That's why I will always remember where to find the initial pages, which have the ad stacks on them and are just waiting for stories and pictures. I tried to find it for about six minutes, then I gave out a little sigh and asked. Theresa came over, set her hand on the mouse, and showed me where to find it. She did it very kindly, and without any sarcasm or teasing.
I still felt silly.
On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with myself for having been able to manage most of the rest of the page. I just kept reminding myself that it was the first time I'd ever used Quark, and the first time I'd ever created a page for a working newspaper. I may never have all of the magic keystrokes memorized, but at least I can figure things out the long way!
In other news, I recognize everybody's initials now, so after I've given a first or second look to a page, I know who should be looking at it next. I know where the box is to put pages to be read, and I'm finally getting the hang of how far apart things need to be on the page. There's actually quite a long list of things I now feel very comfortable with, save a single thing.
Remember how I hated getting to work before the building closed at 5 p.m.?
Go figure that last week, the Tribune changed its opening hours to finish at 4:30 p.m. Now, no matter what time I get here, I have to ring the doorbell. At least nothing funny happens when I press on the little white rectangle. I just have to stand and wait for a kind person to get up from their desk and open the doors for me from the inside. I wonder how long it'll be before they're so tired of getting up for the interns that they just decide to get keys made for us.
Nevermind, that will probably never happen. It's not on the same priority list as getting a gas stipend (which I have gotten, thank you, God). I suppose I will just have to keep ringing the bell and smiling sweetly when someone comes to get me.
05 March 2009
03 March 2009
Moving forward (?) to whiteness
I have learned a lot of things today.
I'm afraid that I won't remember any of them tomorrow.
That's how I'll forever think about my first day of training to use Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. I've used all but Illustrator before, but it's been a while.
Maybe I should mention now that I have earned the right to begin to learn page design (cue the cheers). I know my lack of exclamation points may be deceiving, but I really am very excited. This evening I spent a couple of hours watching Sandra design and asking her lots of questions.
It seems easy enough. I mean, besides the point that everything she could do, she did at breakneck speed, and had to stop every once in a while and undo what she had done so that I could see the process. Even then, holy canoli, there are so many keystrokes. Let's see...there's...AppleEKLOptionAltFunction48AppleApple Pear Fruitcake. Yes. Fruitcake.
Like I said, I'm afraid I'm not going to remember any of it tomorrow. Luckily, this doesn't seem to phase me. I know that no matter how many times someone tells me where to find the library of editorial templates, I'm never going to remember it alone until I'm sitting in front of my computer, staring into the abyss of the screen. Sometimes inspiration strikes, and I suddenly remember which database to search to find (ie.) the correct mug shots. Other times, I spend such silent moments contemplating the least plaintive way to ask for help.
But I am nearly thrilled for Thursday now, the day Sandra said I get to put together the obits page.
It doesn't sound nearly as interesting and cool when I type it out like that. The obits page is definitely a special page. It's the page seasoned designers feel safe giving to the intern, if that says anything else about it. If you're not familiar with what you're doing, it could take a very long time to do. You have to give different styles to each of the following: names, ages/residences, first paragraphs....etc. Other pages are easier to do; you only have a couple of stories to format. But the obits page can get up to five or six stories (depending on length), and that means you end up doing a lot of highlighting and clicking on formatting styles.
I didn't do a very good job of describing the monotony and difficulties, but they do exist, I promise you. It should be interesting to see how long it takes me to put together a page that takes Sandra about ten minutes to do. One hour? Half of an hour?
------------------------------------
"Time for news!"
That's something my grandpa says when we're at my grandparents' apartment and my grandpa decides he's tired of watching Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends or What Not To Wear. I wish I could do the voice, but I can't. Just picture an 85-year old Dutch man trying to be mischievous and sneaky, and you can do without the voice.
And it is time for news. I've been doing research for a French project, which I'm presenting tomorrow afternoon, and I've discovered something very alarming. Currently in the class, we're reading Frantz Fanon's Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks). The chapter I'm focusing on is titled "La femme de couleur et le blanc" (The Woman of Color and the White Man).
Fanon's objective was to see if real love can exist between a black woman and a white man, considering all the history that moves to keep them separate. I started my research with nearly the same objective, but I wanted to focus on how badly some black women wanted to be white.
I know most of you don't read or speak French, but here is one site that just amazes me. I unfortunately can only figure out how to translate it from the google.fr search page, but hopefully some of you others will be successful. The article even mentions Fanon and his book.
On another site, I found a statistic saying that today, 20% of people of African descent living in the Parisian area try to whiten their skin. Products used range from acne medication to steroids. Fanon says it stems from an inferiority complex, and all I can think about is Michael Jackson and plastic surgery.
The most interesting thing, for me, is that all I have to do to find information in French is enter (in French) the words "whiten the skin." Almost everything after that includes news sources, random blogs, articles... almost everything is directed at black women and the effort they put into lightening their skin.
On the other hand, when I do the search in English, I have to say "black women who whiten their skin" to get any results even minutely related to what I want. There were a few entries at first on yahoo.answers.com of fair-skinned women looking to have the classic translucent white skin, and I suppose that IS nearly what I was looking for, but I feel like it had less to do with inferiority and more to do with beauty images.
Maybe I'm wrong about that last statement, but it just makes me so sad that women would do this to themselves. Here's an article from the British paper The Guardian. I think this is probably the best English article I've found about the issue. It borders between a rant and a serious article, I feel, but I believe it's very pertinent.
Also, this video from ABC looks like it should be really good (I can't watch it with the sound on). I'll have to look at it tomorrow morning before my presentation.
I'm afraid that I won't remember any of them tomorrow.
That's how I'll forever think about my first day of training to use Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. I've used all but Illustrator before, but it's been a while.
Maybe I should mention now that I have earned the right to begin to learn page design (cue the cheers). I know my lack of exclamation points may be deceiving, but I really am very excited. This evening I spent a couple of hours watching Sandra design and asking her lots of questions.
It seems easy enough. I mean, besides the point that everything she could do, she did at breakneck speed, and had to stop every once in a while and undo what she had done so that I could see the process. Even then, holy canoli, there are so many keystrokes. Let's see...there's...AppleEKLOptionAltFunction48AppleApple Pear Fruitcake. Yes. Fruitcake.
Like I said, I'm afraid I'm not going to remember any of it tomorrow. Luckily, this doesn't seem to phase me. I know that no matter how many times someone tells me where to find the library of editorial templates, I'm never going to remember it alone until I'm sitting in front of my computer, staring into the abyss of the screen. Sometimes inspiration strikes, and I suddenly remember which database to search to find (ie.) the correct mug shots. Other times, I spend such silent moments contemplating the least plaintive way to ask for help.
But I am nearly thrilled for Thursday now, the day Sandra said I get to put together the obits page.
It doesn't sound nearly as interesting and cool when I type it out like that. The obits page is definitely a special page. It's the page seasoned designers feel safe giving to the intern, if that says anything else about it. If you're not familiar with what you're doing, it could take a very long time to do. You have to give different styles to each of the following: names, ages/residences, first paragraphs....etc. Other pages are easier to do; you only have a couple of stories to format. But the obits page can get up to five or six stories (depending on length), and that means you end up doing a lot of highlighting and clicking on formatting styles.
I didn't do a very good job of describing the monotony and difficulties, but they do exist, I promise you. It should be interesting to see how long it takes me to put together a page that takes Sandra about ten minutes to do. One hour? Half of an hour?
------------------------------------
"Time for news!"
That's something my grandpa says when we're at my grandparents' apartment and my grandpa decides he's tired of watching Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends or What Not To Wear. I wish I could do the voice, but I can't. Just picture an 85-year old Dutch man trying to be mischievous and sneaky, and you can do without the voice.
And it is time for news. I've been doing research for a French project, which I'm presenting tomorrow afternoon, and I've discovered something very alarming. Currently in the class, we're reading Frantz Fanon's Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks). The chapter I'm focusing on is titled "La femme de couleur et le blanc" (The Woman of Color and the White Man).
Fanon's objective was to see if real love can exist between a black woman and a white man, considering all the history that moves to keep them separate. I started my research with nearly the same objective, but I wanted to focus on how badly some black women wanted to be white.
I know most of you don't read or speak French, but here is one site that just amazes me. I unfortunately can only figure out how to translate it from the google.fr search page, but hopefully some of you others will be successful. The article even mentions Fanon and his book.
On another site, I found a statistic saying that today, 20% of people of African descent living in the Parisian area try to whiten their skin. Products used range from acne medication to steroids. Fanon says it stems from an inferiority complex, and all I can think about is Michael Jackson and plastic surgery.
The most interesting thing, for me, is that all I have to do to find information in French is enter (in French) the words "whiten the skin." Almost everything after that includes news sources, random blogs, articles... almost everything is directed at black women and the effort they put into lightening their skin.
On the other hand, when I do the search in English, I have to say "black women who whiten their skin" to get any results even minutely related to what I want. There were a few entries at first on yahoo.answers.com of fair-skinned women looking to have the classic translucent white skin, and I suppose that IS nearly what I was looking for, but I feel like it had less to do with inferiority and more to do with beauty images.
Maybe I'm wrong about that last statement, but it just makes me so sad that women would do this to themselves. Here's an article from the British paper The Guardian. I think this is probably the best English article I've found about the issue. It borders between a rant and a serious article, I feel, but I believe it's very pertinent.
Also, this video from ABC looks like it should be really good (I can't watch it with the sound on). I'll have to look at it tomorrow morning before my presentation.
26 February 2009
"Got anything for me?"
I had been sitting at the desk for about ten minutes when I heard one of the sports guys (Scott?) start talking to Colin, a copy editor/reporter.
Apparently an intern called him earlier this afternoon and asked if they were going to have any work for him to do. Sports Guy Scott said, "Uh...Yes." Intern Dude said, "Ok. Cuz I just didn't want to waste any time and was just making sure."
...Interesting.
Wow. I don't know about you all, but in my world, that's not exactly something you say to a potential employer. That's not something you say to anyone you've agreed to go and work for. I know that I haven't had very much work experience besides bookstores and volunteering and now this opportunity at the Tribune, but calling in to say anything besides "I am dying of tuberculosis" or "This blizzard is so bad all the highways are closed" is, in my book, out of line.
I even secretly hate the part-timers from the bookstore who would tell me, the unbiased student who of course relates to everything via drunk stories, that they were really tired but were going to go out anyway and get completely sloshed and call in the next morning. I'm sorry, did I miss something? Are we supposed to be lazy and shirk all responsibility?
Of course some of you are thinking right now, "Oh, sure, she's one to talk, she's blogging while at work. Hypocrite." I'll just point out that the blog is required for the internship class, I'm in between projects (I don't write this all at once, you know), and, last but not least, I take no official breaks.
I told Sports Guy Scott that he should be sure to give that intern the most mundane job he can think of. As I write this, Intern Dude is typing up the schedule. And that, for a terribly evil reason, is immensely gratifying.
Oooohhhh....a new project! I get to triple edit the Tribune's Stylebook! Yay!
And by that I mean, oh help. This stack of paper is almost half of an inch high. I might need more than one felt-tipped pen to finish this baby up.
Now for a word question. Why do we pronounce "indictment" as [in-dahyt-muh
nt]? It came from the middle English "enditement;" why didn't we just keep it the way it was? I'm sorry to say that before about two years ago, I had no idea that it wasn't [in-dict-muh nt]. I really didn't. I knew what "indictment" was, I just didn't know how to spell the real word.
I wonder how many other words there are like that? I used to be so vain about my spelling skills, hurrah for spelling bees. Then I started learning French, and speaking a different language with so many cognates whose only differences are spelling (usually "s" in French when it's "z" in English) really messes me up. It's like I don't know who I am anymore.
It's even worse when I realise (see? Example #1) that the British spell it differently than we Americans do; and like the proper snob that I am, I decide to go British. I don't know why part of me thinks that the British are cooler speakers than Americans are. We just sound so....dull. Like no one cares about speech anymore. They just want to get it over with; if they just barely manage to get their point across, that's fine by them.
I say that everyone should start caring and begin pronouncing vowels the way they were born to be pronounced! .......Uh.....And how was that, again?
Apparently an intern called him earlier this afternoon and asked if they were going to have any work for him to do. Sports Guy Scott said, "Uh...Yes." Intern Dude said, "Ok. Cuz I just didn't want to waste any time and was just making sure."
...Interesting.
Wow. I don't know about you all, but in my world, that's not exactly something you say to a potential employer. That's not something you say to anyone you've agreed to go and work for. I know that I haven't had very much work experience besides bookstores and volunteering and now this opportunity at the Tribune, but calling in to say anything besides "I am dying of tuberculosis" or "This blizzard is so bad all the highways are closed" is, in my book, out of line.
I even secretly hate the part-timers from the bookstore who would tell me, the unbiased student who of course relates to everything via drunk stories, that they were really tired but were going to go out anyway and get completely sloshed and call in the next morning. I'm sorry, did I miss something? Are we supposed to be lazy and shirk all responsibility?
Of course some of you are thinking right now, "Oh, sure, she's one to talk, she's blogging while at work. Hypocrite." I'll just point out that the blog is required for the internship class, I'm in between projects (I don't write this all at once, you know), and, last but not least, I take no official breaks.
I told Sports Guy Scott that he should be sure to give that intern the most mundane job he can think of. As I write this, Intern Dude is typing up the schedule. And that, for a terribly evil reason, is immensely gratifying.
Oooohhhh....a new project! I get to triple edit the Tribune's Stylebook! Yay!
And by that I mean, oh help. This stack of paper is almost half of an inch high. I might need more than one felt-tipped pen to finish this baby up.
Now for a word question. Why do we pronounce "indictment" as [in-dahyt-muh
nt]? It came from the middle English "enditement;" why didn't we just keep it the way it was? I'm sorry to say that before about two years ago, I had no idea that it wasn't [in-dict-muh nt]. I really didn't. I knew what "indictment" was, I just didn't know how to spell the real word. I wonder how many other words there are like that? I used to be so vain about my spelling skills, hurrah for spelling bees. Then I started learning French, and speaking a different language with so many cognates whose only differences are spelling (usually "s" in French when it's "z" in English) really messes me up. It's like I don't know who I am anymore.
It's even worse when I realise (see? Example #1) that the British spell it differently than we Americans do; and like the proper snob that I am, I decide to go British. I don't know why part of me thinks that the British are cooler speakers than Americans are. We just sound so....dull. Like no one cares about speech anymore. They just want to get it over with; if they just barely manage to get their point across, that's fine by them.
I say that everyone should start caring and begin pronouncing vowels the way they were born to be pronounced! .......Uh.....And how was that, again?
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