Them Mean Old First Issue Blues

After a frantic weekend of writing and editing, I had the copy ready for my first paper on Monday morning...ready for the designer to go to work building pages and layouts.
My instructions on the pipeline were sketchy, and I made mistakes, but we finally got it sorted.

My designer was a quiet young goth woman (from Cortez? A goth?) who was very nice, but not forthcoming with information. She took what you gave her and didn't ask questions. This could be good and bad.

The routine was to load all the stories, photos and slugs into the server, then she would grab them and do the layout and design and print a full-size "dummy," which I would mark up with a red pen to indicate changes and corrections. Often, when there was late news, I would be writing and editing while she was designing, holding space for last-minute entries.

I did the community calendar, wrote a predictable, friendly editoral about being the new editor, found a politically neutral cartoon for the editorial page and waited for my dummy.

A couple of hours later, Morticia handed me a life-size sheaf of dummy pages and headed to lunch. Before she left, she told me to leave the corrected dummy on her desk and she would make changes when she returned. I believed her. Red pen in hand, I circled and corrected typos, indicated changes, made sure story jumps landed on the right page, and generally made the whole thing 'clean.' Leaving the mark-up dummy on her desk, I departed the mothership office with a sense of utter relief. First issue - done. Next issue - much easier.

I had done my best to put out a decent paper, but like many writers and editors, the minute it was done, I was sprinting toward deadlines for the following issue. I barely glanced at the final print version of the paper - my mind was pointed toward next week's finish line.

The paper came out on Wednesday. I happened to be at my desk at the mothership office that day. I got a call from a nice woman at the Mancos Public Library. She sounded frantic, but friendly. "This week, we would like to help you proof the paper. Ok?" What? Volunteer proof readers? Are these people nuts? I told her I would call her back and grabbed a copy - ohmygod. ohmygod.  o  h    m  y    g  o  d.

Morticia, I discovered, had failed to make the corrections indicated on the marked-up dummy proof. The paper was filled with typos, mis-spelled names, captions going with the wrong picture....my stomach churned. This was the beginning of a long, intimate relationship with over-the-counter antacids.

I'll own it. I was nuts to have turned over corrected proofs and not checked afterwards to confirm the final changes had been made. I partially blame oxygen deprivation and the altitude, but that only goes so far. I'm older and wiser now, and remain appalled that I trusted an untried designer with my first issue. Enough excuses. Time for damage control.

After calling the library ladies back and explaining my heinous error, I started on next week's editoral, an abject apology for a poor first showing. I didn't pass blame to anyone but myself, but publicly being a righteous stand-up editor would have to wait a week.

You're only as good as your last issue. That meant if I wasn't fired, I had to wait an entire seven days to start changing readership perception. The more reactive readers had an entire seven days to work up a good head of outrage. As a result of this first issue, I remained unforgiven in the eyes of a small group of readers for the rest of my tenure. The hate club was small, but not too small to drive me bonkers for a year and a half.

My next stop was the my bosses' office. I grovelled and confessed, expecting to be fired. Suzi was completely non-plussed.

"Oh, don't worry about it. It's your first issue," she said.

"But the ladies at the library are volunteering slash demanding to proof the next issue," I said.

"No, we are not going to have volunteer proof-readers. You'll get this right, and it won't take long, but I'll speak to the design department. You'll know what to do to keep the thing in hand next week," she said.

Ok. If Suzi could forgive me, I might be able to forgive myself, despite the fact that there were those who never did. Meanwhile  my learning curve was bending into uncharted waters.
Next week: Aftermath - the shitstorm.