The newsroom's colder, but the editing's warming up...

As our building starts to freeze with the onset of fall and winter weather, the editing is just warming up. Well, we have to make up for the weather somehow.

I have to agree with Exec Editor Cam Kittle - the beat system, in my mind, has been quite a success. (Knock on wood - we've still got all year...) But writers who were afraid they'd run out of ideas for stories now find themselves somewhat overwhelmed with the amount of events and feature ideas coming their way.

In the case of the power outages earlier this year, having our Crime/Cops beat writer (Alexis Macarchuk) on it right away simplified things and enhanced our coverage. In the past, we would've sent out mass texts and struggled to find a writer who could be in the right place at the right time.

The website's awesome. Thanks to John for getting the ball rolling last year, and Cam for initiating everything - from the training sessions to waiting for everything to upload, often until 5 a.m. most nights. Definitely a better reflection of the content, when it looks classier, more streamlined and professional.

Ok, am I gushing too much? Well, from a content editor's perspective, things seem nice. An influx of writers and ideas is never a bad thing. Though we could use some editing help, which we're working on.

With a slightly smaller staff, everyone's a bit more diligent in the newsroom. While Sporcle marathons used to keep everyone in the newsroom till 2 or 3 a.m. last year, it's actual page layout and online posting that does it this year.

And last night - we had our largest amount of original content of the year. When the stories we receive from students double, long nights follow. Thank God I scheduled no classes on Fridays.

So that's where we are. A trip to Austin, Texas over Halloween weekend (National Media Conference) should get the five of us going even more excited. Yes, we're missing Halloween at UNH for newspaper stuff - and it's gonna be great. Look how dedicated we are! (I'm actually very excited).

I'll stop blabbering on and thank everyone who continues to visit the website and read the paper. Hopefully we are serving our purpose: keeping students, faculty, staff, the community, and alumni informed.

Until next time,

Keeley