this is the cover of our cattlemen's edition this fall, and it's 36 pages - four pages larger than what i thought the maximum would be. thanks to our sales staff - jody, denise and curt - we are way over in advertising for the edition. that's a great thing overall, but a point of stress for us on the editorial side of things. if they sell too much advertising, or more than i anticipate, and we have to add more pages, that means i might run short of articles to fill those pages.
thankfully, everything worked out just about right. there are 25 articles in the edition, and a 26th that will run on the cover of the regular paper this week, to lead people into the special edition. thankfully i had those extras, as initially i was only planning for 24 articles, including the cushion. in past years we usually use 20 or 21 articles total.
the nice thing about this edition is that heather and i had help from two correspondents - echo and melissa. echo contributed two articles, and melissa wrote three, which really is a big help. the remaining 20 were pretty evenly split between heather and i. i forget how it eventually fell with the numbers. but it was a lot, i know that!
so, i spent last friday afternoon, after the regular weekly went out, sorting, organizing, editing, labeling, copying and pasting in all the files for the edition. each file holds a document containing the article, title, captions and pull quote, as well as word count so tracy has a better idea of where each article will fit. the photos are also in their corresponding files, titled, resized, lightened and converted to CMYK for the printer.
maybe it takes me longer than it would someone else, but i read through everything carefully at least once, making the appropriate editing changes for wording, punctuation, flow, etc. i also spent the better part of saturday working on the files, and by the end of the day i had all of them to tracy. just in time to head out to the beacon for a few drinks with scott, heather and company! paula was also there, decked out in full 80s clothing, for the themed bachelorette party she was a part of.
now, we're on to proofing the edition. i'm in buffalo at a legislative meeting today and tomorrow, but i've got the edition printed out, and worked through some of it on my lunch break. proofing requires another careful check of the editorial, as well as formatting, titles, captions, layout, etc. it's the big-picture proofing.
this is what the pages look like when we proof. tracy has gone through and blocked out all the ads, fitting them together where they need to go. certain ads need color, and most run in black and white, so she has to make sure the proper ads land on the color pages. incidentally, the articles that fall on the color pages get color photos, as well.we have an A section and a B section in cattlemen's, so this is a page from A.
so now you know why i've been absent from my blog for some time. the reason i'm posting at this moment is because we're in the middle of a wyoming livestock board budget and fees report, and most of the important things on this subject we've already covered in the paper. next we're talking about livestock identification, quarantine, feral animals and other such subjects from the livestock board, and i'll have to take copious notes on them.
other than work, this last weekend i did get a chance to clean the house a little, put my new rug down, *** install the new tv scott and i bought friday night ***, rearrange a little furniture and thoroughly water the front yard. i didn't go anywhere on sunday, and it was wonderful. it's been a long time, and i needed it.
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