One of our nation's military services, I think it was the Marines, used to run a television ad that only partially sticks in my memory today. It emphasized how early its service members wake up and get active in the morning.
"We do more by 9 a.m. than most people do in a day," the ad said. Or at least it was something to that effect.
(You know how you try to remember something, and you just can't, but you feel like you can't think about anything else until you find what you're looking for in your memory bank? That's what I'm doing about this particular ad. If you remember what part of the military did the ad and what the slogan was, please enter a reader comment to this blog!)
Anyway, back to the ad.
I was pretty young at the time it aired, at a time when waking up early was the last thing I wanted to do.
Yet, most of my life that's exactly what I've done - wake up early. I was delivered newspapers when I was young, doing my route on my bike at 4:30 a.m., drinking a Mountain Dew and then getting ready for school. After a college hiatus from early rising, I've spend most of my professional career at afternoon papers that are in production during the morning hours.
But I've got to tell you, the early hours brought on by the change of printing the Times in Janesville is going to take some serious getting used to.
Before Monday, the Times was printed in Monroe, with a press time of 11:30 a.m. Our newsroom deadline for completing the last page of the paper was just before 11 o'clock.
Now, our press run in Janesville is at 9:30 a.m. to get papers back to Monroe in time for delivery in racks and to drivers. Which means our last page has to be completed at 8:55 a.m.
Stretch. Yawn.
As I'm writing this, we're almost an hour and a half past finishing today's paper. It's 10:15 a.m. and my work day already is approaching six hours old.
Some of the folks in our newsroom have undergone some serious schedule changes to accommodate. Reporters work later in the day to make sure their news stories are done before they go home - no more time for early-morning late touches to stories. Our photographer stays in later to make sure all photographs are ready for the next-day newspaper and online product. Sports guys stay here until their section's done ... probably not too many minutes away from the time that news editors are waking up to start their shift. That begins at about 5 a.m., plus or minus 15 minutes or so (depending on workloads and snooze buttons).
I've thought often about that television ad lately, as by 9 a.m., the daily paper's already done and we've moved on to the next day's product. I'm up so early even the cable television networks aren't yet delivering fresh news to early-risers on the East Coast. And, like my younger days, my energy, what there is of it, is fueled by caffeine from Mountain Dew - though these days the stomach only can take unleaded (diet).
We've done all of this to ensure that an earlier deadline does not mean less local news in the Times. So far, so good.
So tired.
"We do more by 9 a.m. than most people do in a day," the ad said. Or at least it was something to that effect.
(You know how you try to remember something, and you just can't, but you feel like you can't think about anything else until you find what you're looking for in your memory bank? That's what I'm doing about this particular ad. If you remember what part of the military did the ad and what the slogan was, please enter a reader comment to this blog!)
Anyway, back to the ad.
I was pretty young at the time it aired, at a time when waking up early was the last thing I wanted to do.
Yet, most of my life that's exactly what I've done - wake up early. I was delivered newspapers when I was young, doing my route on my bike at 4:30 a.m., drinking a Mountain Dew and then getting ready for school. After a college hiatus from early rising, I've spend most of my professional career at afternoon papers that are in production during the morning hours.
But I've got to tell you, the early hours brought on by the change of printing the Times in Janesville is going to take some serious getting used to.
Before Monday, the Times was printed in Monroe, with a press time of 11:30 a.m. Our newsroom deadline for completing the last page of the paper was just before 11 o'clock.
Now, our press run in Janesville is at 9:30 a.m. to get papers back to Monroe in time for delivery in racks and to drivers. Which means our last page has to be completed at 8:55 a.m.
Stretch. Yawn.
As I'm writing this, we're almost an hour and a half past finishing today's paper. It's 10:15 a.m. and my work day already is approaching six hours old.
Some of the folks in our newsroom have undergone some serious schedule changes to accommodate. Reporters work later in the day to make sure their news stories are done before they go home - no more time for early-morning late touches to stories. Our photographer stays in later to make sure all photographs are ready for the next-day newspaper and online product. Sports guys stay here until their section's done ... probably not too many minutes away from the time that news editors are waking up to start their shift. That begins at about 5 a.m., plus or minus 15 minutes or so (depending on workloads and snooze buttons).
I've thought often about that television ad lately, as by 9 a.m., the daily paper's already done and we've moved on to the next day's product. I'm up so early even the cable television networks aren't yet delivering fresh news to early-risers on the East Coast. And, like my younger days, my energy, what there is of it, is fueled by caffeine from Mountain Dew - though these days the stomach only can take unleaded (diet).
We've done all of this to ensure that an earlier deadline does not mean less local news in the Times. So far, so good.
So tired.
