After that Desiree decided that I was a capable person and she suckered me into taking on the position of Assistant News section Editor. I was a little annoyed with this because all I wanted was to copy edit and being the Asst. News Ed. meant that I would have to work a bit harder than I had originally planned. Meaning I would have to write stories occasionally as well as copy editing.
2 weeks into classes the News Editor, whom I was being an assistant for, quit the paper completely, leaving me to take her place. So now I am the News Editor, which is a position of leadership and my duties include:
-Finding possible stories on/off campus
-Assigning stories to my writers and myself
-Assigning deadlines & due dates
-Writing stories for my writers who don't come through for me
-Lecturing and disciplining those on my team who slack off
-Designing my pages
-Editing my writer's stories
-Editing my pages before print
and
-Stressing out 24/7
At first I was overwhelmed and highly upset that they threw me into this. After all, most of the people on the paper have at least spent one semester there before. Some of them have been working for the paper for over a year! Not only did they choose me, someone with no experience in journalism, to be an Editor of an entire section, but they also gave me a team of writers who are also all new and inexperienced. To make matters worse, I have 5 writers. 2 of which never answer my calls or emails and they also never do the assignments I give them. I have another writer who is an older man from the middle east and does not speak English very well. He also is from a country where men are in charge of women, so when I assign him a story to write he will basically tell me that he's not going to. He'll then tell me about a story his is working on (which often has nothing to do with RCC or Riverside) and that he'll be writing that for the paper instead of what I assigned him and that he'll get it to me when he gets around to it... So of a team of 5 writers I really only have 2 I can rely on.
I was bitter at first and frustrated, but after working on the paper for a few weeks now I realize that I like having leadership positions and that high responsiblity motivates me. My editor in chief has told me that she would not have given me the position if she didn't think I could handle it, which I'm taking as a complement. It makes me feel good to know that the RCC paper team feels that I am trust worthy.
Journalism has kind of consumed my life right now. I feel like its a full time job, but I'm growing more and more attached to the class and the paper. Now I don't know if I can keep myself from enrolling in the class again next semester.
Wow, this story has gotten rather long... I think I'll stop here for now. More updates on the paper later!
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