I’d planned it all out last night– today I would leave the house at 8:15 in the morning, drive to Durham, be there by 8:50, and get to the office at 9. However, the day didn’t go– as with most things– according to plan. My 35-minute commute stretched into 45 and then 50. I had vastly underestimated Durham traffic, and I started to worry that I’d be late for my first day of work at Indy Week.
I shouldn’t have worried, though. After arriving at Indy Week’s door and ringing the bell, a guy from the sales department let me in. Noticing my distress, he told me that most people hadn’t gotten to the office yet. That was because it was Tuesday– production day– which meant hours were variable, even chaotic. People popped in and out of the office at random times, as the writers were often out chasing stories for the next issue. And indeed, the newsroom was almost empty when I walked in. Lara had gotten there a few minutes earlier, and we set up on a set of couches, where we worked for most of the day.
The newsroom’s environment was less crazy than I expected. People shouted across the office when they needed something from a different desk, but that was the loudest it ever got. Most things happened digitally– articles sent over email, communications between our office and the one in Raleigh, phone calls with police about crimes, city council news coming in about taxes and housing and the city’s experiment with participatory budgeting. That digitalization meant that the newsroom, besides that occasional shouting, most often seemed calm and even still on the surface. Besides the constant hum of printers spitting out articles for proofreading, there wasn’t much of an indication that there was a 2:00 deadline at all.
However, there was work to be done. Lara and I edited features from the paper’s food section, one about a tea shop raising funds for its first pop-up and the other about how a brewery was celebrating its ten-year anniversary by publishing a coffee table book about itself. We then went out to lunch at Neomande, which was delicious, and got back in time for the 2:00 deadline. At that point, most of the work was done and the final pieces were sent to the printer.
After that, we talked with the editor in chief about our plans for the rest of the week. I’m going to be working with the Durham editor on city news and politics, which I’m super excited about. I can’t wait to work on stories tomorrow!
