Karla's Kolumn

Last month I passed my two-year anniversary mark as the editor here in Worland at the Northern Wyoming Daily News.

It’s been an interesting and enjoyable two years. I’ve written before about the pleasure of getting to know Worland as an adult rather than when I was a child living in rival Thermopolis, so this time I want to reflect on the differences working for this daily as compared to working at weeklies.

I have worked on one other daily, the Laramie Boomerang, in which I was the city council beat reporter and general news reporter. I worked Monday through Friday and Laramie had, at that time, two staff photographers. So that experience on its own is different as well.

The first thing to realize in working for a daily compared to a weekly is that there are no holidays – except Christmas, well sort of.

When I worked for weeklies in Lovell and Basin, our offices were closed, and the majority of the staff were off on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day and Good Friday. Occasionally we even closed and took the day after Thanksgiving off.

The first year I worked in Laramie, I drew the short straw and worked Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. At the Boomerang, which came out six days a week (Tuesday through Sunday), we took Christmas Eve day off so there was no paper on Christmas. That was the only holiday that the entire staff had off.

Here at the Daily News we started out with just Christmas Day off but with the switch to delivery by mail rather than carrier, we’ve added Thanksgiving, New Year’s and the Fourth of July.

The editorial and pressroom staff work all other holidays, Veterans Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Columbus Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and President’s Day.

The biggest difference is scheduling. Every day at a daily is production day and making sure we have stories for all the editorial and sports pages.

For a weekly, there’s one production day, which was Wednesday, finishing up layout and sending pages to the press. Tuesday and Tuesday nights in Basin were also production nights, where the majority of the layout was completed and usually any last minute writing.

I was frustrated when the town council moved their meetings from Monday nights to Tuesday nights in Basin due to truly having to write on deadline. But I had plenty of practice having covered the Laramie city council on deadline.

And, I’m getting even more experience now covering Worland city council and school board and making sure the story gets in the next day’s issue.

For a weekly, the rush never seemed to hit until Monday and Tuesday. Many times Thursdays and Fridays I spent working on our website and/or Facebook page, catching up on other things besides writing, editing and taking photos. Thursdays and Fridays were much more relaxing on a weekly.

Relaxation for a daily comes Friday night after the last plate has been sent to the press and you can enjoy the weekend, unless you’re on the editorial staff and you’re assigned weekend duty.

The schedule during the work week being somewhat more relaxing for a weekly is one advantage over a daily. Another is having more time to research stories and put together a complete story.

In a daily, sometimes there’s a rush to make sure we get some type of story on an incident and then plan a follow-up the next day.

That brings us to the main advantage for a daily, which is the fact that it is a daily. Yes, news that happens on the weekend we wait until Tuesday to report but anything during the week we have the opportunity to get the news out as quickly as possible to our readers. And, we have the opportunity for an immediate follow-up for an ongoing incident.

Working for a weekly, it never seemed to fail that some major news event always happened on a Wednesday after pages were sent to the press.

One of the biggest news items I can recall was when I was in Lovell and there was a suspicious death of a young man hit by a train. The incident, I believe, is still unsolved.

We were able to get a very small story in that week, thanks to the diligence of this, then cub reporter, tracking down the sheriff and coroner at a local restaurant. They had worked much of the morning as the incident occurred about 5 a.m., if I recall correctly.

There are similarities for weeklies and dailies. There is paranoia involved with both. Paranoid about what you ask? Wondering each time the phone rings if it’s some mad reader calling to complain. The paranoia for a daily newspaper comes every day and working for a weekly, it only comes on Thursdays. However, when working for a weekly, Thursdays often gave me a false sense of security. Friday comes and bam, the angry caller surprises me with a phone call.

When the phone would ring on a Thursday in Basin and it was announced that it was for me, I would ask “friend or foe” and usually get a reply of “they don’t sound too foeish.” At times, especially in Basin, because the office was small, if it was an angry reader I needn’t ask because I could usually hear the ranting and raving through the earpiece of whoever answered the call.

Last week I was asked by our job shadow from Worland Middle School what I enjoyed most about the job, and the answer is the same regardless of working for a weekly or daily. First, it is the people you get to write about and take photos of and the people you get to know.

Then it is the fact that every day is different, every story is different. Even when covering the same event year to year, the people are different and it gives you an opportunity as a photographer to look for new ways to photograph the event.

As for the least favorite – that also is the same, working for a newspaper, on the editorial staff, you have to realize it is not a Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job. There are late nights and weekends and some things you can plan ahead and others you have to respond to when the incidents happen.

And after all that, I wouldn’t change it. I enjoy working for a newspaper. It became my passion working for the Thermopolis Independent Record during my senior year in high school through a career resource training course, and it remains my passion.

So I guess the Daily News and it’s readers are stuck with me as the editor in what what I hope is a long journey.