BrianManzullo.com

Blistering the eyes: My job at The Grand Rapids Press, and how it’s helping me

It’s been about one week since my site launched, and I realized I haven’t written too much about The Grand Rapids Press. So here’s everything in a nutshell.

I’m spending my summer in Grand Rapids, Mich., located on the western side of the state with a population around 190,000. The Press is one of eight Michigan Booth newspapers (soon seven, with Ann Arbor News in its final week), and all run their Web sites through MLive.com.

Of all Michigan newspapers, The Press actually is doing well. It’s still a daily, only a handful of staffers have had to accept buyouts and pay cuts were at around a minimum when they happened.

I’m interning here on the copy desk. The beginning of my day usually comprises of sleepwalking out of my bed at 3 a.m., going to work at 4 a.m. and working on deadline up until 8 a.m. I get a page to design and others to proofread and make sure no potentially damaging mistakes make it to print.

The second half, from 8 to noon, it all depends. Usually I get advance pages to design and proofread anything that comes to the racks. I’m also in charge of Saturday’s Religion section in terms of designing. This week, however, I’m sitting at the Web desk as well, posting blog posts and stories as they come along. A nice change of pace.

One thing I’ve learned on the copy desk: You spend a great portion of the day reading small text on paper and looking at a computer screen. It can be a pain on your eyes, especially if you wear contacts like me!

But the biggest learning experience is seeing how a newsroom ticks from another side of things. I already interned at The Saginaw News as a reporter, so working as a copy editor gives me a much different perspective. Knowing how a newsroom needs to operate is absolutely critical to being a good journalist. And especially for me, since I will be Editor of Central Michigan Life in the fall. (That gig starts in nearly three weeks!)

Another great thing is this newspaper is not blind to the shift online. There’s a small Web team here that focuses on posting stories, aggregating and keeping the Web site looking fresh throughout the day so readers can return and see something different. Other editors on staff, including many copy editors, also are trained using the online system. As far as multimedia goes, there are some who are trained to work video and the occasional Soundslides project.

The page design aspect, despite strictly being a print thing, also is great experience. Some say it will be a thing of the past in 10 years, when newspapers become more and more online-oriented rather than print. That may be true (although I don’t think newspapers will be gone that soon). But page design teaches you a lot of things you can use online and still forces you to think journalistically. Both pagination and online work task you to package your stories the best you can and to make your structure look neat and organized. You still have to edit and proofread your finished product. You still have to crop and place your photos. Most of all, it still involves great newsroom interaction, stressing communication as much as production.

One of my dream jobs is to work in online journalism so, as a college student, it’s important for me to think about how my current experience is helping me toward that goal. Perhaps what gets lost in all this is the core aspect of journalism: Communication. In other words, working with a content publishing system is more than just clicking around and sometimes being an HTML technician. Working with video is more than just hitting record, connecting your camera to a computer and slapping your exports together with voiceovers, B-rolls and text.

No matter what you do, you still have to know journalism. How can you use all these new tools to your advantage, to keep people satisfied and coming to YOU for local news and features? Furthermore, being able to think like a reporter in the field and being able to catch little things such as misspellings and inconsistencies while at the cubicle are great values to have on a day-to-day basis.

If we’ve learned one thing from journalism, it’s unpredictable. Sometimes you may never know what is in store.

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