Posted by: bethanyasouza on: July 10, 2009
I had given Diablo a fond farewell my last week while walking out of those doors, thinking for sure that I had seen the Diablo offices for the last time.
But to my surprise, I got an e-mail from the Managing Editor, LeeAnn, who offered me a chance to come back one last time. While Ethan was away for vacation, she needed a little bit of extra help in the office working with editing that I had never done before. And they would pay me for it. I would have done it for free, regardless, just for the opportunity to learn something new. But being paid for it was even better. It made me feel like I actually worked there.
I was working some crazy hours at my last week at Best Buy, but I was able to come in on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.
It was a lot of fun.
I learned about InDesign, it’s the program they use for the layout and edits for the magazine. I have never used it before, so my job was to look at the markings of the proofreader and edit according to those. I learned a lot about proofreading marks as well. I never knew there were three different size dashes: The hyphen, the en dash, and the em dash. And the difference is very slight, but it’s significant for where it goes and the use for the magazine. InDesign was surprisingly easy to use, at least for what I was using it for. I also got to sign my initials as an Associate Editor to verify that I put the edits through for the layout I was doing. I was like an Editor for a day.
When I went super fast through the editing of the proofs, LeeAnn somewhat ran out of things for me to do. So she handed me an article and told me to look through it and make notes if anything sounded off or confusing. Like a real Editor! So I busted out a red pen and tried my best. I read the article at least twice before I started making marks, but read parts of it over and over about 3 or 4 times, making sure it sounded right in my head. I’m not sure if they used my suggestions, but I’m sure I’ll find out when the August issue comes out.
On Wednesday, I did more InDesign proofs and a few other tasks. The editor in chief had a couple of projects for me. The first one was about the brainstorming. Remember when we had the brainstorming session with colorful post its and markers that made me want to color? Susan wanted me to get a whole Word document list of the post it ideas we came up with that day. The project took awhile and I had a hard time reading some people’s handwriting, but luckily I was there that day and was able to remember what people suggested about their ideas. The list ended up over 3 pages and I tried to categorize where the posts it stuck on the graph. Susan very much appreciated my help in gathering the good ideas we had into one document.
The second task I was given was writing up tweets for Diablo Magazine’s twitter. I worked on tweets for upcoming events and mostly I worked on tweets promoting Diablo’s Food Awards (anything you see about Food Awards are what I wrote). I also used one of the tweet apps (I forget which one) that made a tiny url for the Food Awards tweets and tracked how many hits it got when posted on twitter.
It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed being a Guest Editor for the week.
I’ll really miss the staff at Diablo and working there. I just hope I’ll end up working somewhere similar to it.
Doing something I love.
Posted by: bethanyasouza on: June 7, 2009
It was weird going back to Diablo Magazine after graduation weekend, but I was happy to have the opportunity. On Monday, it was Memorial Day and Ethan didn’t tell me if Diablo was open or not. Playing it safe, I woke up Monday morning and went to Diablo. (ended up taking a wrong turn because I was out of it. oops!) When I got there, the parking lot was EMPTY. So I simply turned around and went back. I’d rather have played it safe than missed out. Ethan apologized for not letting me know. He was going to e-mail me and forgot. Simple mistake.
On Thursday morning, I did fact check for a couple Best of the East Bay people, including a young actress and a radio political commentator. I couldn’t believe that the actress was close to my age, but she definitely has the look so she might make it in the business. I also got a really good fact check for her article that Ethan complimented me on. So that’s always a good thing. The radio personality was over my head. The article included a brief interview with her which was way over my head. Reminded myself why I’m not a political person, especially when I visited this website.
I also got in contact with a couple more people about the winery article that I was working on for fact checks. I left the day with only two sources to check. I kept getting the voicemail of one winery, so I wasn’t sure how to get in contact with them.
I haven’t met any of the new interns but a couple of fact checks of theirs passed my desk. They have SUPER neat handwriting, neater than the interns I used to work with. Great. They make my fact checks look messy. Oh well.
Posted by: bethanyasouza on: May 25, 2009
Of course, most of this week included Best of the East Bay fact checks. I found out about Zeppelin tours of the San Francisco Bay, which cost about $500 per person, per hour. I also tried to contact a cafe that only seems to be open during the evening. I’m not sure how they will be able to fact check that.
I was able to attend the editor meeting, and was thrilled that the editor in chief tried to include, by giving me the copies of the paperwork they were going over for segments in the July and August issues of the magazine. It’s crazy how they have to write many of the articles in advance and have a set deadline when things are done. The deadline for writing articles isn’t so hard, usually it is adding the art and the layout which can take the longest. It’s interesting how the process works with everyone working together but separate on their own projects. They have to work really closely as a team. It’s why I think interns can be such outsiders, because we are such a small part of the process.
I also talked to a reader pick for a Danville Yoga teacher. I could tell from the piece written about her that she was VERY into yoga as a spiritual activity and was quoted as saying that yoga was a way to help you with the things you can’t change and to help the things you can (or something similar to that). And she debated about this phrase, not sure if that was the true belief of yoga. Then asked me, “Does that sound like something I would say?” I just replied “oh most definitely”. Her piece was only a page but our conversation lasted for twenty minutes. She also tried to convince me that I needed to do yoga. I tried to tell her that I wasn’t very flexible, but she assured me that she wasn’t either. And then proceeded to tell me the history of how she fell into yoga in the first place, and now she’s the most sought after yoga instructor. After I finally got off the phone, two minutes later when I was trying to get out of there, she called back. The other intern handed me the phone. She wanted to add a little bit to her phrase, “and open to the possibilities”. She was very nice, but I wasn’t surprised to learn that she first got into yoga in Santa Cruz.
And I finally snagged myself a copy of Napa Sonoma. I figured that I worked so hard on the listings and those blasted maps that I deserved to own a copy of my own. It turned out looking really nice. And the map looks even more intense than I remember.
On Wednesday, I had a serious talk with Ethan about future employment. He told me flat out that there wasn’t a position for me on the staff, but he would try to help me with any leads he might get. I guess that is the best I could hope for.
I think the conversation spurred him to give me something a little bit more challenging for the day than the normal fact checks. I had a few Best of the East Bay’s to work on, but he gave me a blog to work on too. It was about a foundation for Lafora Disease, a very rare degenerating disease. I looked up on the website about this 18 year old girl who was suffering from siezures, trembling, and loss of mental ability. She can no longer walk and has to be fed through a feeding tube, and she was diagnosed only at 14. It was the saddest story ever, and I had a really hard time with it. I called the mother to talk about the foundation and the event. I think it is the longest blog I have written and I was happy to see that they edited very little of it. It was really a challenge for me, and I ended up being very proud of how it turned out.
I also talked to Ethan about staying through for the month of June, since I will be living in the area for the summer. He seemed happy about me staying. I figured that I would keep with the blog even though the semester is already done.
Posted by: bethanyasouza on: May 11, 2009
I woke up on Monday, after a very long weekend, with a pounding headache right behind my eye. Since my track record with migraines has not been very good lately, I took an Advil and called in sick Monday morning. I hated doing it considering that I had done such a great job the week before, but I had so much going on for the week I didn’t want to risk getting worse by pushing myself. It was a good thing because I went back to sleep and felt great when I woke up around noon.
On Wednesday morning, I was refreshed and happy to be back. Most of the June issue is done, and now there will be a huge push for the July issue. The July issue is Diablo’s biggest issue because of The Best of the East Bay. I have a feeling I will have to become best friends with The Best of the East Bay.
The Best of the East Bay is when people vote and editors choose the best restaurants, businesses, boutique shops, art galleries, spas, gyms, and basically anywhere that is a place to go, all located in the East Bay. All the businesses get a sign saying Best of the East Bay for the year (I see them regularly when I walk in downtown Walnut Creek) and of course it brings in business. It’s a HUGE deal. And I definitely learned that on Wednesday.
Ethan gave me four fact checks to start for the Best of the East Bay, just short paragraphs about the places we’re mentioning that are printed on this huge list. I left messages for three people, but I did talk to one person. She was manager of a spa and a reader favorite. I wasn’t allowed to let her know that this was for The Best of the East Bay, so I had to be vague in my answers when she asked what the article was for in the July issue. And then she figured it out, “OMG! Is this for the Best of the East Bay? Did we get Best of the East Bay?” And all I told her was, “I can’t tell you anymore about the article” and she freaked out, telling me she wanted to jump up and down and scream. And that’s when I realized that this was going to be a HUGE deal for the next few weeks. Ethan warned me that people might figure it out on their own, so it’s not a huge deal that she figured it out. Then she went on in great detail about her spa, when all I needed to know was if they did microdermabrasions or not.
I also left messages for Diablo Dish fact checks. As well as Faces fact checks. I hate fact checking for Faces. It’s pictures of a bunch of people at certain key events, and you should only fact check the people who are Big Names, which kind of irritates me because what if the photographer got the spelling of the other people wrong. And they see their picture in the magazine, only to realize their name is misspelled. I guess it also bothers me a little bit because I feel like I have to fact check EVERYTHING so I can’t let the other names just go unchecked. Besides, even if they’re not a Big Name, they could be somebody important and we wouldn’t even know it.
In other news, I finally finished my Diablo Arts article. I met with the Artisitic Director of the Diablo Light Opera Company, who was super nice and offered me a discount on tickets if I ever wanted to see the show. I’m seriously considering taking him up on his offer. I had a lot of trouble writing the article though. It was supposed to be around 500-600 words and I could barely say 250 about it. But she said that she could add more on the piece in back ground information, so I sent her what I had. I wanted to check in with her to see if it worked out okay, but didn’t get a chance. I guess we’ll see when it’s finally printed.
Here’s hoping to a better intern week.
