DBK story I wrote for class

I wrote this kinda fun story for class about a night in The Diamondback's newsroom. Enjoy!


In the days when journalism is said to be a dying profession, college newsrooms have never been more alive. The Diamondback, the University of Maryland’s independent student-run newspaper, is no exception. Each night, Sunday through Thursday, students fill the newsroom, hustling and bustling to put out the next day’s paper and creating the energy that is keeping their future profession alive.


Please keep your arms inside the car at all times, because working in a newsroom can be like a wild roller coaster ride.

Each day starts out slow and calm with a meeting of the minds: editor’s meeting.

Enter Kevin Robillard, the newspaper’s editor in chief. “Thoughts on today’s paper?” he asks.

The brief discussions that ensue sound eerily similar to each editor’s meeting before. “Front page looks real nice,” one editor says. “Centerpiece is great.” Criticisms follow. “I wasn’t crazy about today’s guest column,” another editor comments. Shortly after, each section editor – News, Opinion, Diversions and Sports – lays out their story budget for everyone to discuss. Each day, it is the same old same old: Editors goof off. Editors get back to work. The meeting ends and the real work begins – the ride starts to get good.

Enter the copy editors, the most under-appreciated employees at The Diamondback. Each day at 3:30 p.m., they get to work and start reading the stories for the next day’s paper. Each story get’s checked for facts, AP style and grammatical correctness. When things go slow, they get blamed. When mistakes make it into the paper, they get blamed.

“Wow, it’s hot in here today,” someone complains.

“It’s cause I’m here,” Mike Warley, a copy editor, replies in witty fashion. The newsroom laughs, welcoming the short break from work. Then everyone goes back to their respective jobs. Warley continues to fact check a Terrapin men’s basketball story before passing it on to another copy editor for a second read.

As the day trickles on into night, stories creep through reads, layouts are designed and finalized pages roll to the printing press.

Enter Anna Eisenberg and Rob Gindes, The Diamondback’s front page designer and opinion editor, respectively.

Tonight, they battle the newsroom. A lame diversions tease impresses no one, and Gindes suggests teasing his page, specifically a funny column about girls wearing skirts at the university. It would be the first ever opinion tease to appear on the front page of the paper.

“I am just happy because I get to play with skirts,” Eisenberg jokes as she designs the tease. She types “Skirting’s the issue” into the tease. It doesn’t fit. She changes it to “Skirting the issue,” which Gindes argues isn’t as fun of a pun.

Soon after, Robillard comes over to the editors who are hard at work. He tells them the tease has got to go; he isn’t comfortable teasing opinion on the cover.

“It’s so cute,” Eisenberg argues, frustrated that the tease she spent the last half hour creating was being wasted.

“I understand that it is cute, but cuteness doesn’t determine things in a newspaper,” Robillard answers back, knowing that as the ultimate authority at the paper that he’ll likely have his way.

Eisenberg and Gindes fight for their tease, like editors before fought for things they believe should or shouldn’t end up in the paper. At the end of the day, they lose. No opinion tease will appear in tomorrow’s paper. Eisenberg and Gindes, upset at the lost battle, leave the newsroom to let of some steam. The newsroom goes quiet.

Enter Allison Stice and Marissa Lang, Diamondback news editors.

Stice and Lang work at separate ends of the newsroom editing separate stories. They interact frequently throughout the night, but never for long. At this point, Lang, Stice’s boss, looks over at her editing a story with a reporter. In Stice’s hand: an Iron Man figurine from the 2008 film.

“Are you licking Iron Man?” Lang shouts from across the newsroom.

“It’s mine!” Stice answers defensively, and then bursts out laughing at how ridiculous she sounds.

The Iron Man figurine, given to the Diversions section editor back in 2008 as a temptation to review the film, is a treasured object in the newsroom. Each day, it ends up with someone new. And each day they press the buttons on the toy, making it shout its catch phrases over and over again: “I am Iron Man,” it says, in a deep, computerized, machine-like voice.

After the commotion caused by toy dies down, the newsroom fades back into the silence.

Like a roller coaster ride with its ups and downs, the newsroom often goes from loud, bubbly and chaotic to quiet and calm. Each hill is a new problem, each dip is the solution.

Hill: “Do we want to call them men or women?” Lang asks about a transgender criminal caught shoplifting at Rugged Wearhouse a few months ago.

Dip: “Call them transgendered individuals,” Sports Editor Aaron Kraut immediately answers.

Hill: “Our reporters keep spelling people’s names wrong,” a copy editor complains to Lang.

Dip: “We’ll talk about it at our next beat meeting. I know it’s unacceptable,” she replies.

And so the night goes. Hill, dip, hill, dip, hill, dip.

Enter rap music. As the night winds down and most of the staff leaves, editors fill the noise void with music and YouTube videos.

“Life is such a … roller coaster ride, then it drops/ But what should I scream for, this is my theme park,” the rap song goes. It is a fitting end to the evening, as the roller coaster draws to an end and the newspaper staff exits the ride until the next day.