Apr. 2nd, 2005
Bleh. What a day.
I wake up to "the pope is dead... maybe, we think, well, he's close, anyway, any minute now." I bust my ass to get to work early, figuring I'll need some extra time for the front page.
I get there to find that we've been given three extra open pages for the pope stuff. I ask, what if he doesn't die today? I'm told, we're screwed. Or we'll have to fly to Rome and kill him. Or I guess we'll just run with it anyway and deal.
Option No. 3 it was. I spent all freakin' day with one ear on MSNBC, waiting for the news that had to be coming any minute, those four magic words, "the pope is dead."
They never came.
So basically, I had like five pages, all of which were going to require a lot of thought and time, and I couldn't move very far on any of them until the pope died or until I decided he wasn't going to. Man, that sucked. It was only at 10:30ish that I reluctantly moved aside the "Pope passes on" hed and pulled over the "Pope's final hours" hed I had sitting in the margin, just in case.
Then, once we finished up and got the pages out (in a massive hurry -- too much space that we just couldn't fill any sooner or faster), I realized that wait, hey, what if he dies at 12? Or even 12:30, when there's still time to hold the press, or 1, when we might be able to sneak in a replate? Ultimately, I fiddled around with side jobs and watching MSNBC until 1, just to make sure he wasn't going to die when we could do anything about it on this cycle.
I hope he goes tomorrow... I can't take much more of this. Though it's gonna suck, 'cause for one, we've already shot our load now, and for two, we already have a package for tomorrow that I was looking forward to playing up and making pretty, but now, I'll have to shove it to the side for more pope.
I wake up to "the pope is dead... maybe, we think, well, he's close, anyway, any minute now." I bust my ass to get to work early, figuring I'll need some extra time for the front page.
I get there to find that we've been given three extra open pages for the pope stuff. I ask, what if he doesn't die today? I'm told, we're screwed. Or we'll have to fly to Rome and kill him. Or I guess we'll just run with it anyway and deal.
Option No. 3 it was. I spent all freakin' day with one ear on MSNBC, waiting for the news that had to be coming any minute, those four magic words, "the pope is dead."
They never came.
So basically, I had like five pages, all of which were going to require a lot of thought and time, and I couldn't move very far on any of them until the pope died or until I decided he wasn't going to. Man, that sucked. It was only at 10:30ish that I reluctantly moved aside the "Pope passes on" hed and pulled over the "Pope's final hours" hed I had sitting in the margin, just in case.
Then, once we finished up and got the pages out (in a massive hurry -- too much space that we just couldn't fill any sooner or faster), I realized that wait, hey, what if he dies at 12? Or even 12:30, when there's still time to hold the press, or 1, when we might be able to sneak in a replate? Ultimately, I fiddled around with side jobs and watching MSNBC until 1, just to make sure he wasn't going to die when we could do anything about it on this cycle.
I hope he goes tomorrow... I can't take much more of this. Though it's gonna suck, 'cause for one, we've already shot our load now, and for two, we already have a package for tomorrow that I was looking forward to playing up and making pretty, but now, I'll have to shove it to the side for more pope.
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