The Very Big Night

Current Project: Writing Black Badge Season 2

% Complete: 89

For how busy of a day it became yesterday, I actually managed to do a good job of keeping the word count solid. I wrote 2200 words, spread over two separate writing sessions. I watched my nephews for a few hours in the afternoon, then wrote, then spent the evening hours covering City Council for the newspaper. I got home and wrote that, finishing around midnight, and I jumped into more Black Badge. Council is extremely draining, so it was nice to power past that and get some quality writing done.

Other stuff

It was a huge night for my newspaper. We've been in business for a little over 5 years. The other local newspaper in this area has been in business for like 70 years. So you can imagine the uphill fight it's been for us to gain credibility and acknowledgment. Well, we're not the red-headed stepchild anymore. Last night the City Council voted to elevate The Grizzly Detail (that's the paper I write for, for those that don't know) to the status of Official Newspaper of the City of White Settlement. They didn't take the title away from the other paper, so now there are two official papers here, but I really don't even care, because this is a huge victory for us. We're a tiny operation, with just 3 people on our main staff (that includes me). The division of labor can be weighty sometimes, and each of us wear about twenty different hats, from writers to photographers to deliverymen to web designers to whatever else we need to be. We've worked so hard to get to where we're at, and to get the recognition last night and to have the council put their support behind us (well, 4 of the 5, one voted against us, hahaha), it's so rewarding.

Being the Official Newspaper means that we'll now receive every notice that the City is legally obligated to place in the paper. They have to do this all the time, from ordinance notices to bid announcements, they put in ads constantly. Ads are the only revenue stream for a newspaper, and securing this new source of ads is a big boost for us.

I'm not going to lie, I feel like we've deserved this distinction for a while now. We turn around city news insanely fast, and my bosses give me the freedom to be a storyteller. They allow me to craft things like City Council coverage into a narrative, alive with quotes and supporting information. We've gone above and beyond in this city, and we just kept our heads down, ignored the negativity, ignored the attacks that came against us, and focused on doing what we're passionate about. Informing the citizens about the important things going on in their world. I'm insanely proud of what we've accomplished, and I feel like this is a huge validation for us.

So yeah, as you can tell, I'm really pumped up about this. It makes me want to work even harder, to get even better, and to show this community on a weekly basis why they should be proud to have us as their Official Newspaper.