Above is the logo from the first front page of the weekly newspaper I had been hired to be the editor of, The National News Weekly. Many hours of sweat and toil went into producing Central Kentucky's newest weekly newspaper, but it only lasted a short time. The staff and I only produced four issues when the publisher decided to shut down the paper due to multiple problems. Although it didn't last long, it was a fun ride, and the first production day is a story worth telling.

It was Monday, February 28th, 2000. It was the day I had anticipated for five months. Production Day. All the months of preparation and anticipation came down to these final few hours. We knew it would be rough. We had the ultimate deadline. It was scheduled to go to press at 10 a.m. Tuesday and hit the streets on Wednesday, March 1st. The question was: Could we really do it?

The sales staff had begun the preparations for this day over three months earlier, when we produced the demo for the paper. They had the task of selling ads for a paper that didn't quite exist yet. An arduous task, to be sure.

As the editor, I had the pressure of producing a product that would be at least as good, if not better, than what the sales staff was bragging about. I had the task of looking at the type of news we would be publishing, hiring interns to write articles, and talking to Brian, our senior graphics designer, about the finer points of layout and production. But for all our preparations, we knew there was only so much we could do ahead of time. In the interest of timely news coverage, most of the final layout had to be saved for that night.

The deadline for having articles turned in was the Friday before. But the news section was the last task. That's because the world of news changes minute by minute, and you never know what's going to be hot enough to report until right before you go to press with it.

If all the ads had been built by the end of Friday, or if the decision hadn't been made late Monday afternoon to revamp the layout of the paper, or if the laptop hadn't died, we night have been okay. It may not have turned into the all-nighter it was destined to be. But all of the above factors played a part and added to the excitement, as well as the stress, of the day. And night.

Because of the final ads being sent in at the last minute (which we didn't turn down, because it meant more money), Brian was still building them Monday afternoon. That put him behind on turning his attention to placing articles. Because of the decision, which came down from John, the publisher, to change our number of columns from six to four, which meant resizing the entire master layout Monday afternoon, Brian was still working on it as well. And because the laptop decided it wouldn't go online so I could start downloading news articles at 3:30 in the afternoon, my job wouldn't be as quick and easy, either. In the end, I had to go home and use my own computer just so I could get online and email the articles to work.

I got back to work around 7 p.m. I still had a lot of editing ahead of me, not to mention the placement process. It would be another four hours until Brian was done with his side, and I was done with my side, and we could sit down and begin placing the news articles.

We labored. We talked. We discussed. I had to decide what was important enough to go on the front page, what could be saved for inside pages, and what could be left out entirely because we ran out of room. Brian had to decide how it would look good. He used little tricks to make the headlines fit, the columns even up, and the photographs fit properly.

Almost six hours later, at around 3:40 a.m., we had finished the news section. The victory felt good, but we still had quite a few of our 28 pages that weren't filled in. By this time, my second wind had long since come and gone, and my brain was shutting down. Since John was sympathetic, and I had an appointment with a client at 10 a.m. Tuesday, he told me to go on home. He and Brian would finish up.

I felt a little guilty at leaving what I considered to be my baby unfinished, but at that hour of the morning, and with that level of fatigue, I didn't have the strength to argue. So I went home to catch what little sleep I could.

I managed to drag myself in to the office on Tuesday around 1:00, after that morning appointment and on about four hours of sleep. Brian finally stumbled in late in the afternoon. I asked him what time he and John finished things up. I was shocked, but not totally surprised, when he told me 8 a.m. They had been there for a full day, and they saw it through. The only thing left to do at that point was to make it through Tuesday as best I could and anticipate Wednesday, when I would finally lay my hands on an actual copy of what we had labored so hard to produce.

Finally, the moment came. I walked into the office on Wednesday morning to find a stack of Issue One sitting right there on the table. I forgot about anything else and excitedly picked up a copy to browse through. I oohed and aahed over what our midnight oil burning had produced. I picked out a few criticisms as well. But I knew that overall, we had pulled together and created something special.

I was proud to be a part of The National News Weekly while it lasted. It gave me a brief taste of what it was like to be a real journalist. While it is unfortunate that John's dream of a weekly newspaper focusing on national news didn't go far, the experience only strengthened my desire to pursue my goals in the field of journalism.

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