Super Bowl odds and ends

Ah, it is over. I’m kind of sad the Cardinals lost, because without Kurt Warner and Anquan Boldin I would not have finished fourth in my fantasy league.

I got my design on on Saturday. I’m not usually a creative person design-wise, so sometimes I get nervous when I’m handed a page and told, “Make it pretty.”

I designed the inside Super Bowl page for Sunday, and I thought it turned out pretty well. Really, I’m just excited I got to put text into the paper upside down. (If you can’t get the PDF to work, I turned the answers to a Super Bowl quiz upside down.)

I’ve turned cutlines upside down before while designing pages quickly (they never made print, thankfully!), but I was really excited when I realized I could put this accidental knowledge to use. Ah, InDesign and its infinite secrets.

I also thought my women’s basketball page turned out clean, if I say so myself. Pages with breakouts, boxes and time/date/places are the hardest.

On Sunday, I got to slot. It was kind of a surprise that I was given that responsibility on Super Bowl Sunday, I think it went well.

Baptism by fire

Update: So, due to some crazy circumstances, my debut was put on hold last night.

Whenever winter weather is forecast, we usually have earlier deadlines. This allows the delivery trucks more time to distribute the paper. Unfortunately, sometimes that makes for a hairy situation on deadline, and last night was no exception. Deadlines were moved up an hour to 10:30 and 11:30. Bedlam was our package on the cover, and a large portion of an inside page was devoted to it too.

The game ended at 10:20, which gave our writers just 10 minutes to get their stories in. Some items we waited for, some we didn’t. (The writers also get a chance to rewrite for the final home edition. They did an awesome job getting their stuff in on time, though!) We were a couple minutes late, but it was OK.

But it’s probably (I say probably, what an ego) for the best that the section was not in rookie hands last night. (Thank you, Sarah.) It didn’t help that it took me an hour to get to work due to the traffic, ice and frequent stopping for emergency vehicles.

We were shorthanded anyway as one of my co-workers got into an accident (she was OK), so we shuffled duties and I went into turbo page-layout mode. It was definitely a three-Coke night. I especially thought Page 4 came out nicely, considering all the stuff on it.

I’m still on the schedule to slot Thursday and Friday, so I’ll be sure to post a recap of those adventures.

P.S. There was a great comment by a reader on our breaking news story about the postponement of the Tulsa Oilers game… “Hockey postponed due to ice? Only in Oklahoma.”

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OK, swinging the blog pendulum from sports back to editing…

I get to slot the section for the first time tonight. Essentially, I get to be in charge. I am a little nervous, but I think it will be fine.

Except Bedlam basketball doesn’t tip off until 8 p.m.

And there’s a 90 percent chance of “wintry mix” tonight.

Gulp.

(For you non-journalistic types, here is a nice description of the duty. At the World, you decide which stories go on which pages, assign the stories to copy editors to read and give pages to designers, communicate with writers and give the pages the final OK.)