When I finally got the transfer, my coworkers and friends were more happy and relieved than jealous and angry. A lot of them recognized my potential almost from the moment we met, and my experience working for two college newspapers set the stage for my eventual move.
I finally made it upstairs :-) I told all my friends that I plan to move upstairs and get my name in the paper one day. Working "at" The Bee was an enjoyable and humbling experience. Since July 25, I could now say I work "for" The Bee ... As a sports clerk. Yes, I know I'm not the biggest sports fan most of you know, and truth be told, I was actually offered this job once before about three years ago. Stupid me turned it down at the time, but I digress.
It feels humbling being able to walk into the newsroom each evening during my shifts and NOT feel out of place. Even when I shadowed the copy editing staff last year, I felt like I was the factory worker checking out "how the otherhalf lived." In my former department, we did not even have our own e-mail addresses. Now, not only do I have one of my own, I also have one of these:
It was a big change in more ways than one. My new position was a night job, involves working at a computer for a great deal of time and fielding calls from readers about sports scores, complaints and the occasional correction. I would soon learn from my coworkers that people call for "other" reasons aswell.
I thought I would have a tough time up here because all the people I knew were very high on the totem pole. As it turns out, almost everyone in the sports department has been very nice to me, and willing to lend a helping had if I did not know what to do or was looking for help (which, during the first few weeks, I desperatelyneeded). Listening to the copy editors and page designers chat and BS amongst themselves makes every night entertaining to some degree.
Among my first duties was to learn how to use Hermes, the newsroom computer system for article and page editing. My partner, Dennis Hansen, taught me the ropes and showed me a great deal of shortcuts and tricks on how to make life on theagate, or scoreboard pages, and pain-free as possible. Our first three weeks together were training sessions, complete with learning code, searching for stories on the AP wires and rewriting code so what we drop on the page will actually fit.
My main page - the scoreboard. Every night I'm here, this puppy's a clean slate. From 5 until just after 10 p.m., my job is to fill in this page as much as possible. Our budget list includes what items to put on the scoreboard, and what items to put with their respective sports. On Sundays (for Monday publication), I put all the NFL stats and box scores on the football page. On Mondays (for Tuesday publication), the NBA standings and scores go where they need to be.
Fridays (particularly this time of year) are the craziest. On those nights, not only do Dennis and I get to work together, we also have half a dozen interns working alongside us, taking calls from coaches and recording those scores. On those nights, I deal mainly with the agate while Dennis coordinates with the interns.
Ironically, uploading articles to the Sac Bee website was the position I was aiming for. I still do the upload - just only for the sports section as part of my clerk duties. When I told Tom Negrete, the Bee's online managing editor and one of my newsroom contacts, about my planned move in July, he steered me in the sports-clerk direction. He believed, however, that my chances of getting this job were slim to none because they already had their eyes on two prospects (I later learned that BOTH prospects had dropped out of consideration and another just said "no").
"When you try to kick Elmo's ass, you better bring a lunchbox because it's gonna be an all-day affair," Jeff Caraska, Sacramento Bee Copy Editor.
I miss Jeff.
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