A lasting leaving lesson

Today I was in a wedding. Usually, this means you get your hair done, get in a dress, assist the bride and eat cake. I did these things. For me though, it meant I had to push aside news for the day. This was as fatal a mistake you can make as an editor.

I'm graduating so I've been training a new news editor for a while now. He's watched me over the last year, more. He knows I use no fewer than three sources an article and fact checking is about 80 percent of my job.

Today, while I was gone, he posted an article to the Web that libeled two women. It accused them of something, and in the end we could have gotten sued and lost the paper had I not seen it soon after it was posted.

It makes me think I focused too much on my perceptions of perfection for my section instead of investing more time into training the future section leader. At the same time, everyone has to learn the hard way.

Freedom v. Safety

Here's the dilemma, it's always the same: safety versus freedom.

As a libertarian (and I must say that loosely, as I don't hold to all of the party's ideals.), the choice is always freedom. That's the point of the philosophy. And it's what I choose when I vote. It's what I expect politicians to choose.

But now it's my choice.

I expect to get offered a job. It's what everyone expects of me. Go from college to one of the state newspapers and move up from there.

Or I could move to Baltimore, the city I would like to live in and just try to make it. Live off my savings and freelance my way into the Examiner or Baltimore Sun, somewhere I'd rather be. It's a big risk and I'll probably end up making lattes for a while; but it's freedom.

I don't know what I'll choose yet. There are a lot of what ifs. Maybe this will test my politics on the smallest, most important level.

A not so sad goodbye

Today is the last real day that I will be the news editor of The Maine Campus. I say "real" because we must compile the Year in Review edition Wednesday.

I thought about it for a while. Knew it was coming. I anticipated being sentimental, ready to cry. I'm not. I'm ready to be done, graduate, get a job and fly away from my protected little student newsroom. 

It has taught me a lot. I've learned everything I know about journalism here. Everything that was taught by theory in classrooms was either reinforced or practiced here. The SPJ code of ethics became not a theory, but a practical guide. It's where controversy, stress, breaking news, deadlines, deaths, argument and office politics pile up into one environment and break you into a better editor. 

I will never regret taking this job. I feel like I'm part of something big. I run into people and they recognize my name, tell me about the times when they were the editor. I love the stories, the communities and, mostly, my coworkers. But now I'm ready. I grew up here. This was my college experience: Not classrooms and socializing on quads, but yelling loudly about awful  leads, good headlines, and ridiculous wordplay. I gained connections, clips, experience that brought me to jobs and internships that will propel me further.

But it's time to go. I've outgrown my pond; learned what I could and must go out into a much faster, crueler, more politically correct work environment and start working my way up there.

I'm ready for what comes. Bye Maine Campus, I love you.

What a day

At 4:30 a.m. I got a call asking if I planned to bring an extra shirt.

At 5:30 a.m. the caller and I were on the road.

Will is a driver with a death wish. His 1993 Chevy, which already has a dent that extends from the driver-side headlight passed the edges of the door and is inches deep, blasted through the rain, over the slippery road (I-95) at 90 mph — 80 mph when he sent e-mails from his Blackberry (to who at 5:30 a.m.? I don't know either.)

I accepted that I would die before the student newspaper's Web editor and I arrived at the gay marriage debate in Augusta, Maine. This made the ride much easier.

Until the glam rock.

Here is a snippet of the lyrical value I weathered for the 2-hour ride, made 50-minute ride.

"You know honey, honey

That it's so funny, funny

That you mean so much to me."

Now imagine a man in glittery platform heels singing it. OK? Now repeat the above lyrics 20 times. OK. Will sang along cheerily  — cheerily; at 5:45 a.m. Thankfully, I was just coming into consciousness as Dunkin Donuts' medium hazelnut with cream and sugar eased its way through me.

Separate from Will and me, our copy editor turned video helper Kaley rode a bus down. Her assignment: Write a feature about riding the bus with UMaine gay, student activists.

It doesn't take the B- I got in calculus to figure this one out. Kaley's bus left UMaine at 5 a.m. 

Will and I left campus at 5:30 a.m.

The ride was approximately 95 miles.

Will passed the bus 70 miles into the drive.

Before reluctantly passing the bus — not "reluctantly" because he was worried about crashing into another car while going 90 mph down a wet highway and having his 16 year old Chevy burst into flames which would sizzle in the drizzle — no. He needed to say hello. To Kaley. In the bus. To achieve this, which he didn't, he stayed parallel to the bus for a good two miles. This held up the other one car on I-95 that morning.

We got there though. We got there where I reported on the debate on gay marriage in Maine for 12 hours, not including the drive, set up and break down of all the equipment. We then got back and edited a newspaper. All in a day's work.

Story weaving

Today I thought about how the stories I tell show people. They are their stories of their lives. When they die people can still know them, find them.

I also thought how no one will write about me — probably. It's good because I'd just correct his/her grammar anyway.

But then I thought what if these people's stories that I tell are part of my own maybe these people's stories make up my story. I can look through the three three-ring binders I filled in the past few years of other people's stories. Hypothetically, you could track where I was any given week in my college career — summers included.

I am an individualist. Independent. But maybe it is true that everyone's stories are intertwined. I'm lucky to be one of the spiders spinning the complex story webs.

Here is the zone where I will express my thought, "freely"

By creating "Free speech zones" the government takes the "free" out of speech.

There is nothing criminal about peaceably assembling or petitioning the government. It makes me sick that on Wednesday — the day for debate on legalizing gay marriage in Maine — this will (probably) happen. 

Dead again

Two students dead.

Stifling grief. Shoved it in my gut.

Will come back to it later, first: this news.