Another Week Down

Monday: This was the beginning of what was to be a very, very long week at the National Journal. I spent most of my day going through profiles of Congressional candidates who may make a splash this election cycle. That means I had to work within our content management system to create the profiles, assign photos and make text boxes to accompany the items. It is not a hard job, but it is really just hours of tedious data entry and editing.
Tuesday: Terry Michael day! Tuesday we had class where we discussed things like affirmative action, diversity and race. It was identity politics and it was just a discussion and lecture by Terry. It was not bad, although I am not sure I really learned anything with people just discussing their soapbox topics. I headed down to work for another day of profile entry and working with columnist pages and writer biographies. I needed to make sure that those people who were writing for us were actually recognized in the system.
Wednesday: I essentially repeated Monday's schedule on Wednesday because there are hundreds of names that have to go into the computer. Also, I heard from my university that they were getting into Washington today to visit me, so a good portion of my day was spent organizing their arrival. I also learned how to create a section front for the profile features which was an online skill I valuably needed.
Thursday: Terry Michael day! Today was drug day. We spoke with a leader of NORML and a woman who is leading the charge for legalization in Colorado. It was an interesting topic and took up a good part of my day because their lecture and seminar was so interesting. They spoke about the kind of laws that California and Colorado have passed, as well as Prop. 19 which is coming up for a vote in November. This would legalize pot up to one oz. in California. There is polling that shows it is either going to be a narrow win or it will be defeated. It all depends on who shows up tot he polls in California. Thursday is also magazine day, but today things were a bit slower. I just had to pull some photos from Getty and prepare them for a video. Simple day, but long day because I headed to the library afterwards to work on my Honors Thesis.
Friday: Last day of the week but things were really buzzing because we had to move offices today. The online and multimedia team had essentially been working out of a closet on one wing of the building while the rest of the newsroom operated somewhere else. It was a strange set up to begin with, but trying to move computers while cranking out as much work as we could get in before the weekend was trying. I spent Friday trying to work around a bug in our system, and ended up creating a whole bunch of work for myself... which I will have to tackle on Sunday. looks like it will be a long weekend of work for me.