Quite honestly, this is a no brainer, but I will entertain your question anyway. As editor, I have worked tirelessly to have other people write things for me. It’s been exhausting. Every week, I send upwards of EIGHT EMAILS to people to request content. Then they generally take their time in responding, sometimes waiting as long as 28 hours. I keep a master spreadsheet of the content others are producing for me. This master spreadsheet is really difficult to manage and sometimes I spend entire lunch hours at Café 67 just organizing it. I know this might seem hard to believe, but once or twice I have had to go all the way to Irene Mastelli’s online Picasa album and individually pull down up to three photographs to include with the stories that others have written. It has taken me entire showers to brainstorm the bulk of such stories as “The Darden Bowling League Draws to a Close” and “BGiA: Another Successful Year.” And then, let’s not forget all the times I’ve had to deal with complaints from the community! “Dear Catherine: My baby is in fact a girl, not a boy, as you published in the paper. It’s no big deal, just thought you’d want to know since we’re were on learning team together.” Seriously? I have enough on my plate without having to worry about these kinds of things. It’s a thankless job, and I do it without a single complaint.
For these reasons, I believe the editor-in-chief position has been the driver behind the Cold Call Chronicle’s success this year. What is a newspaper if it doesn’t have edge-of-your-seat stories and knee slapping humor? It’s nothing. There, I said it. Yes, money is important, but you can’t get money if no one is reading your paper, and you can’t get people to read your paper if you’re boring and uninspired. The papers haven’t been flying off the shelves because we have a balanced checkbook or because we did our very complicated taxes on time. While the publisher of the CCC, Emily Murray, has been indispensible, hard working, and “responsible,” it is I, Catherine Sproul, Editor-in-Chief extraordinaire, who has led us to unquestionable victory. Q.E.D.
(Thank you so much to all the CCC staff who has supported me and Emily this year! Your jobs are the truly thankless ones, and I’ve been so fortunate to have been able to work with you. Best of luck after Darden! Not that you need it. And to Emily – you are the cheese to my macaroni, and this paper wouldn’t be such a fantastic success without you.)
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