Meet the Press

Today was my first real day of work. We have an actual writing and office staff, now. We have three assistant editors that help Veronica: Sara, Connie, and Greg. They help her set deadlines, make sure the deadlines are met, help decide which stories to go where, and who gets assigned each story.

In addition to them, we have our proofreaders: Jenna, Renee, Callie, Frank, and Toby. Each writing section of the paper is assigned an assistant editor and at least two proofreaders. Greg is in charge of sports and crime with Jenna and Callie working as proofreaders while Sara is in charge of the gossip columns and political cartoons with Renee, and Frank. Finally, Connie is in charge of the front page and the politics section which is proofread by Toby, Renee, and Frank. Our goal is to increase the sections of the paper once we build a subscription base and get a feel for what they want to see more or less of. We’ll probably be hiring a few more writers once we get a substantial audience and get into the swing of things.
Our writing staff includes 2 sports writers: Matt and Dennis, 2 gossip columnists: Jenny and Tom, 2 crime reporters: Stormy and Becky, 2 political writers: Mariah and Riley, and one cartoonist: Jeff. They’re all very different people but seem to fit really well together. Almost all of them were inside hires, the only people who weren’t are Matt, Tom, and Jeff.
Stormy acts like a big shot, he’s the only person who works for the new station the paper is tied with as an on-air personality. He’s the male anchor and because of his busy schedule while shooting he has two researchers who help him, and the rest of the staff, compile information, but they mostly help him.

Our researchers are Samantha and Charlie (Charlie is a woman) and they help make up the rest of the office staff: Steve (my assistant), Rose (Veronica’s assistant), Analie and Lisa (two floor secretaries who answer calls, maintain our website and subscription base, greet clients, etc.)
I got into the office today and visited with Veronica before our big orientation day.

“I got the bistro on the first floor to cater our brunch today, they’re going to be here in about 20 minutes.” I said popping my head in.

“Excellent, I’ll have them set up in the bigger conference room. But first, we need to talk about your first assignment.”

I walked into Veronica’s office and sat in front of her desk waiting for her to begin.

“Since this a new endeavor and we now have employees, we need to start making some guidelines for working here. You know the kind of stuff I’m talking about: dating policies, payment FAQs, things that can get you fired.”

“Okay, is there a policy handbook that you’d like me to base it off of? Maybe the station has one I can look at?”

“Well, we’re trying to revamp the station policies as well, so what you come up with will most likely be adopted for the station as well. I can give you some handbooks from the past few years, though. They’re quite the mess. Our previous HR staff was not as…efficient as you are and I think you’ll do just fine with this. I can give you two of our interns to help you. They’ll be here in two weeks after their summer courses end.”

“Okay, just stick them in my mailbox or give it to Steve when you have them. The handbooks… not the interns.” I giggled.

After that Veronica and I set up one of the conference rooms with brunch and began greeting our new employees. It was a long day of orientation but I think we’ll start getting into the groove of things fairly quickly since everyone we hired has had experience writing for a newspaper. Story assignments are going to start tomorrow and I’ll finally be able to meet Steve, my assistant (he had a wedding to go to that Veronica and I both knew about ahead of time, so it’s not like he just didn’t show up, Veronica has been working with him and Rose since I was hired, so they didn’t need to be at the orientation anyway).