I will be the happiest girl if I never, ever, ever have to work on fact checks, maps, and listings for Napa Sonoma again.
On Monday, I was given my listings of attractions to work on and call some of the places that I still hadn’t got a hold of. And can I say, I love it when people actually call me back. I leave messages all the time and I’m always really excited when they call me back for my fact check. It makes my life so much easier.
I also was able to sit in on the editorial meeting. I love sitting in on the meetings althought I never feel like I have anything to contribute. Right now, they’re trying really hard to be ahead of their timeline of putting out issues for the magazine. For example, May stories are supposed to be due already and fact checked and June stories should also be written as well. The goal is always to finish writing articles, fact checks, and having the art and layout ready BEFORE sending it to be printed. So far, they’ve succeeded. Napa Sonoma is going to be sent to be printed on the 31st. (THANK GOD!)
On Wednesday, I was again faced with my arch nemisis- The Napa County and Sonoma County maps. The editor who looked over the insane fact check requested us not to remove certain wineries from the map, including Rivera Vineyards, which happens to be owned by Steven Rivera, founder of Diablo Custom Publishing. (oops). Since there were a couple others she wished to keep on the map, Ethan asked me to call each winery that was highlighted to be removed and verify if they wished to be on the map or not. Luckily there wasn’t that many of them, 20 or so. And I had to look up the phone number on the website for each one and ask. I talked to about half of them and left messages for the others. (Even one of the wineries the editor wanted to keep, my contact requested it be removed from the map because the property was sold. Victory for fact checking!)
Then I talked to the Assitant Art Director, Alisha, and tried my best to go over the map with her. She had a hard time reading and understanding our crazy notes. So I tried my best to make things clear for her. I stayed until 1:30 to type up all the wineries that were listed in the wrong location in this one part of the map (there were quite a few of them). (Luckily, I went over it one more time because I realized I made a mistake in the order of things. Another victory for fact checking).
I also worked on two fact checks for the day. One of that which seemed simple turned out to be a lot more complicated. The Senior Writer commented that Jimmy Buffett’s upcoming performance was his first East Bay performance since 1991. Of course, I had to find out if that was true. Diving into Jimmy Buffett world is no easy feat, (what the hell are Parrotheads?) but it turns out that in 2001 he played in Oakland (technically East Bay). Another victory! I also e-mailed another contact to verify our fact check. I’m hoping they got back to me.
I really hope I don’t have to do listings this upcoming week. I’d rather just go back to fact checking.
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March 30, 2009 at 9:43 pm
This blog’s great!! Thanks
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