Posts tagged: spartandaily

Ode to Jeopardy!

I originally wrote this for the Spartan Daily in April 2020 to be included as a comparison of different types of loading music. It wasn't ever published, but given the new Jeopardy! season and that I just finished reading Alex Trebek's memoir, I dug it out of the archives. Answer:…

Encrypting a college newsroom with Signal

Students in San Jose State University's journalism program discuss content for an upcoming issue. Student journalists have it pretty rough. Most try to balance passing a full load of classes with running around to get the latest scoop, often without being paid. Many programs are underfunded and, as we've previously…

Inside Scoop - Week 4: One month later

It's been a month and I'm tired. Three newspapers again this week: Tuesday ("the shut it down issue"), Wednesday ("the 9/11 issue") and Thursday ("the Frog Dorm issue"). Tuesday: out at 1:31a.m. We had late breaking news that there was a potential security flaw in the self-checkout machines used at…

Inside Scoop - Week 3: Ready to Repeat

It was a short week, but we put out some goodish newspapers: Wednesday ("the Taco Bell issue") and Thursday ("the women's soccer issue"). Wednesday: out at 1:12a.m. Taco Bell is back in the Student Union, and honestly, for some students, it's going to be the biggest news story of the…

Inside Scoop - Week 2: Long nights

We put out three papers this week: Tuesday ("the pride issue"), Wednesday ("the football team wants to win issue"), and Thursday ("the parking issue"). Tuesday: out at 1:30a.m. We mostly tried too hard on this issue. We tried to do a cutout on the front page plus a text-wrap illustration,…

Inside Scoop - Week 1: Welcome Back

It's been a minute, but school started on Wednesday, and we had to put out another issue (10MB PDF). It turned out pretty nicely I think. We started working on it a few weeks beforehand, assigning stories, and then beginning to meet up and layout the pages starting a week…

Inside Scoop - Week 0 (and corrections)

We put out three newspapers this week: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This week the new editorial staff (led by me) took over production of the paper, with assistance from the outgoing editors, and on Thursday, we were supposed to do it all by ourselves (mostly). On Monday night we finished…

Inside Scoop - Training with 20 pages

This past week myself and the fall 2019 editorial board shadowed the current editors, getting a feel for what our jobs will be like. This mostly went according to plan, with nearly all of the new editors getting hands on experience with pitching stories, editing content, and laying out pages.…