A**hole. Racist. Demeaning. A marked man. These are just a few of the things I have been called during my two years working for The Rotunda. And I have probably pissed off more individuals and organizations on campus than I could name here. I guess I'm what you might call "controversial." Although the negative responses I receive from my articles might hurt for a few minutes, it really shows me how far the newspaper has come over the past few years.
When I first started we were struggling to put out six pages every week, stretching stories to 18 point font, enlarging ads and pulling stories from a campus news wire to fill the space. Now the paper has become something people actually pick up and read every week, and we can see that by the letters to the editor, angry phone calls and e-mails to our adviser demanding corrections (sorry, Halliday).
Every week we do our best to put out a professional-looking product with real news stories about things that matter. While this has greatly improved the quality of the paper, it has not come without hard work and sleepless nights. Every person, from the editor-in-chief to our legion of staff writers, has helped contribute to what I think is the best newspaper Longwood has produced (although I may be a bit biased).
The leader of this overhaul in the past year has been our Editor-in-Chief A.J. Karidis. Some day when he is writing front page stories for the "New York Post" or anchoring a news broadcast for Fox News, I will be able to say I knew him when he was just "this week's help" for The Rotunda. He came in at a difficult time last year, taking over with an editorial board consisting of three members, including himself, and little guidance from the previous administration. His first issue was a massive departure from layouts of the past. A new masthead, more color and a front page picture that related to a story.
Those last few issues of spring 2008 were a baptism by fire. The paper was covering the death of a popular student, a fraternity being put on probation for hazing and the arrest of a basketball player, in addition to the regular stories. A.J. is the one who had to make the final decision on all these stories. He is also the one who gets to hear about it when there is an error in a story or someone doesn't like what gets written (which most of the time is something I wrote). Being editor-in-chief isn't just coming in once a week and doing layout, it's dealing with the week of crap that comes with putting out the paper once a week.
I can't remember a single publication night where I haven't gotten mad at AJ or questioned a decision he made, but somehow the paper has gotten done every week. One of the reasons the process has worked so well is that we balance each other, and our strengths lie where the other has weaknesses. Laying out the special section last week I wanted to shoot myself, and I know I could never do that 30-plus hours a week like A.J. does, and he has told me that doing editing every week would get the same reaction from him as layout does from me. Despite the differences of opinion, yelling (mostly from me) and other complications that arise from working in close quarters for so long, there is no one else with whom I would rather have shared this experience.
As I said earlier, improvements to the paper have not come without added controversy. The person who gets to bear the brunt of the criticism is our adviser, Jeff Halliday. Every week he tells us about his correspondence with students, faculty, staff and community members with complaints or issues about what we have published, and he spends a significant part of his day personally responding to the issues and defending us and our work. He is on campus late almost every night of the week as adviser of several other organizations as well, but he is always there to give us advice about stories or editing.
Since he arrived on campus two years ago, Halliday has quickly become one of the most popular professors at Longwood. I took his advanced writing class this semester just to have him as a professor before I graduated, although he says it was just so I could make fun of him during class, which I do - frequently. I don't plan to do anything with journalism after I graduate, but Halliday has definitely sparked my interest in the subject, despite how much I complain about his projects.
As Halliday has told me many times, we are a lot alike, mostly because of our anal-retentive attention to detail and miniscule mistakes that we let haunt us for years. But I hope that the similarities run deeper than that. After I graduate I am planning to get a job teaching, and like Halliday I want to serve as adviser to several organizations. If I can be half the teacher and mentor that he has been to me, the newspaper and countless other students during his short time here, I think I will be doing damn well. Few people will ever truly realize the depth of his dedication to both his teaching position and every one of his students. Even with a wife and two young children, Halliday always seems to have time for the endless e-mails complaining about something the paper has published or the long line of students waiting to see him. I hope for the sake of Longwood and future Rotunda members Halliday sticks around a long time.
In addition to the changes in the print edition, the biggest change for The Rotunda this year has been adding our Web site with an online edition of the paper every week. For that I have Lauren Boehnlein to thank. Over the past summer, Lauren, A.J., Halliday and I worked to get the site off the ground, talking about layouts and other logistical issues. Lauren took the project and ran with it, talking to the site operator and learning how to work everything. Just like with the print edition, stories don't just magically appear online every week. Lauren spends hours uploading stories and pictures, making sure headlines and captions are correct, mediating comments and updating polls.
While A.J. and I have only The Rotunda to worry about (maybe with classes as an afterthought) Lauren is also doing a million other things on campus. In addition to putting the paper online every week, Lauren is doing Ambassadors stuff, working as an RA or taking care of that ragtag boyfriend of hers (finally). It's been a bumpy road at times, but we have all made it through despite two years of spending countless hours together in the hot, dingy office, playing the MySpace game, texting to each other from five feet away, and occasionally getting some work done on the paper. Our journeys have taken us to Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Kansas City and back to Farmville again, and I hope that we will all continue to stick together on life's journey.
Last year when A.J., Lauren and I took over the paper the editorial board consisted of the three of us, and building that board has been a yearlong project. The three of us sat down at Macado's with Halliday and Dr. Rao last year to pick this year's board, and things took off from there. My first year with the paper we had one section editor position filled, and the rest we covered ourselves, which is why we struggled to put out six pages every week.
Now, every section has at least one editor, and in most cases an assistant too. Bekah, Kyle, Laura Beth, Nicole D., Nicole G., Courtney, Joe, Wes, John, Paul and Chelsea have all come in and helped their respective parts of the paper improve greatly over past year. A&E is no longer filled with stories we pull from a newswire at 3 a.m. We have movie, TV and CD reviews coming in, as well as previews and reviews of campus events. Features, news and sports have made similar improvements, and they have all started covering real news and events around campus. We have moved from being a good-news paper to being a good newspaper.
In addition to the print and online editions, the newspaper has also expanded into video thanks to the work of Paul Eldert and "The Rotunda Show" staff. The program is just getting off the ground this year, but it has provided another news outlet for the campus. This staff works in conjunction has been working newspaper staff to convert stories into video coverage, complete with news anchors, on-air interviews and sports recaps to complement print stories. While fighting for resources with the rest of the school, "The Rotunda Show" staff have managed to put out a continually improving product throughout the year.
I can see the results of this hard work put into the print and online editions and "The Rotunda Show" every week. I have people stop me while delivering papers to get their copy as soon as it comes out. Or I walk into class Thursday morning and see over half the class reading The Rotunda before the professor comes in. Last year we averaged about one letter to the editor per semester. Now, not a week goes by that we don't get some kind of feedback, positive or negative, about our product. And with the addition of Lexi, Will, Hannah, Nathan, Crissy, Corey and Megan for next year, I hope the paper will continue to build on the foundation that has been laid.
For the first time ever in the history of the paper we held elections for next year's editorial board. In the past it has been the last-man-standing method of selecting the leadership, or as someone else put it, whoever can be the biggest a**hole gets the job. Instead of the former leaders picking their successors and departing, we have set up an infrastructure that hopefully will allow the paper to continue to improve.
For the past two years we have poured our hearts and souls into the newspaper, but now it is time to step aside. No more spending 40-plus hours a week in the office. No more sleepless nights writing, editing and laying out. No more midnight McDonalds runs. And no more writing editorials. This brings with both relief and the question of where to go from here. Giving up The Rotunda is like quitting a full time job. We have talked often about how easy school would be without the hours we put in at the office. So now, for our last month of senior year, we finally get to see what that is like. Instead of going from dropping of the paper at the Farmville Herald office and going straight to my 8 a.m. class in the same clothes I wore the day before, I can actually get some sleep Tuesday nights. And next Tuesday I will get to go to a bar night at Mulligan's for the first time in my college career.
When I joined the paper I had no idea how much it would change my life. As much as I may hate to admit it, a part of me will miss this. I have learned more about this campus (both good and bad) than most students. I met my girlfriend (thanks, Bekah!) and some of my best friends while working here. It took a miserable college experience and turned it into something that I will remember fondly. There are few people I could spend so much time around without being driven crazy and driving them crazy in return, but somehow I found those people. Perhaps we are all a bit masochistic to enjoy spending 18 hours straight sitting in a chair placing stories and editing until our eyes bleed, but it has to get done. Every week there are a million little details to check, and despite what Halliday says, I refuse to believe it is not possible to catch them all. But after this week it will be up to the new staff to chase the impossible dream of an error-free paper. As for me, I will be enjoying a considerably less stressful last few weeks of school with a lot more sleep and a lot less work.
Tim Holmes, Managing Editor
