Decisions, Decisions

A schedule is a delicate tool.

Prior to the beginning of the semester, the Publications course's interim professor Karyn Smith sat down with me to work out the details of Horizons' publication schedule through the first half of the semester. Most of the deadlines must be pinned down to the day, because changing any step in the process cascades across all the other steps.

Yet I can hardly recall a semester when some disruption did not occur. A few times it's been the weather. Once in a while it's a communication problem between departments or a problem at the printers.

So it should not have been a surprise something like the blizzard of 2013 would come along to cause trouble.

When you live in New England, you expect unpredictable weather to knock you off course. But this was unlike anything anyone had predicted. The Friday before the storm, The Connecticut Post reported that Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch said he was “bracing for anywhere from 13 to 17 inches of drifting snow,” but that Finch did not anticipate having to close schools because the afternoon's precipitation was expected to fall as rain.

Neither of those predictions was accurate. Bridgeport had 30 inches of snow dumped on it in a day - more than the city had seen in over a century. Surrounding towns fared no better.

My car was buried under the nearly three feet of snow that fell in Fairfield, Conn.
Photograph by Brandon T. Bisceglia.

Housatonic Community College issued a closure notice for Monday, when the Publications class normally meets. It was supposed to be the day when stories were assigned for the first issue of Horizons.

I wrote to Karyn:

I just read on HCC's website that classes are cancelled tomorrow. We really can't do story assignments for Pub I without talking to them in person, but there may be other things we can do. We can extend proposals to Wednesday, and ask [editor-in-chief] Dave and the other editors to look at the proposals and approve (or deny) them.

We should also discuss the publication schedule going forward. Any thoughts?

Karyn wrote back to Dave and me, agreeing that we would have to push story assignments back. She wanted, however, to try to keep the rest of the schedule intact. There was another wrinkle, too. The college would again be closed the following Monday for President’s Day.

There are normally three stages to the writing/revision process. The first is the partial draft, which includes a rough lead, a few paragraphs, and an explanation of the reporter’s plan for the rest of the story. The professor reviews and sometimes comments on partial drafts, but they do not receive any formal editing.

Next comes the working draft. At this point, the article is one-half to three-quarters finished, as is the basic information gathering. Editors look at these drafts and make changes, add comments, and suggest ways the story could be improved.

Last comes the final draft. This draft should be as complete as the reporter can make it. The editor will make only minor changes to the copy at this stage. Then he or she will approve it to be send to graphic design.

Karyn asked how important it was to keep the partial drafts. I had mentioned to her before that partial drafts were not necessary, per se, but that they offer a valuable chance for her to make sure students are on the right track early on. That way, if someone is pursuing ideas that have no relation to their assignment, she can guide them back to the proper path. It’s not such a problem for more experienced students. But it is relatively common for Pub I students (who have never reported a news story before) to lose their way.

I repeated this refrain in my response. She came up with a few different scenarios: we could push partial drafts to Feb. 18, keeping working drafts due on Feb. 20 and the rest of the schedule the same. Another option was to tighten the schedule by making partial drafts due on Feb. 20, then moving working drafts to Feb. 25 and leaving final drafts for Feb. 27.

I cast my vote for the former, reasoning that compressing the turnaround for editors into two days would leave the reporters with little or no chance for follow-up.

That was eventually what we settled on. Sure, it means the holiday will be a little less relaxing. But it is to some extent a blessing to have had the open day. If the blizzard had come at any other time, we might have had a real disaster on our hands.