Jan. 31, 2009

Go team

The Tidings has a very small staff. We get a lot done in a limited amount of time working as a team. one entity. A many-armed multiple personality journalism juggernaut. Three writers, a couple of designers, a web guy and a one-person sports department. Sprinkle in a few stringers and photographers and that’s it. In the past week, we had nearly 70 local stories, columns and guest opinions in the paper, written by staff, local freelancers or submitted by members of the community. That’s not counting police reports, births, letters to the editor and community announcements. We filled in the cracks with barely 40 pieces taken from wire services. That’s a pretty typical week. I’m proud of the people here who make that all happen, and grateful to the residents who help out by letting us know what’s going on. That said, what if there really was just one superjournalist putting it all together? Wouldn’t that be great? At first I thought so, but then I imagined what that would look like. It’s a little scary, as you can see from the morphed photo of our entire staff, above. This came out of the experimental wing of the tidings where we try out new “out-of-the-box” concepts. One look and I knew this was a no-go idea. But hey, we were just spitballing. I’ll stick to our regular staff of superjournalists.