Every issue of the Tucson Weekly includes the work of about 30 writers, photographers and artists—and it seems like every week, something goes wrong with at least one of those 30 people that affect their contribution to the newspaper.
Usually, whatever goes wrong is nothing truly serious, but it nonetheless creates a delay, or necessitates a work-around.
This week, a lot went wrong:
• One writer made the unfortunate yet common mistake of taping an interview without taking notes. Of course, when he went to play back the interview, he discovered the tape was blank. He wound up having to re-do the interview—and, of course, was late with his copy.
• Another writer suffered a hand injury—I am not sure what happened; all I know is a nail was involved—and wound up having to write more than 2,000 words of copy using only one hand. While on painkillers.
• Yet another writer suffered from a nasty case of food poisoning that kept her from doing an assignment.
• A designer missed the better part of a day of work due to either a stomach virus or food poisoning (unrelated to the food-poisoning issue suffered by the writer).
• Finally—proving that sometimes whatever goes wrong is indeed truly serious—a Weekly contributor had to give up an assignment due to a family member's sudden, significant illness.
Yes, life and its obstacles sometimes get in the way of our plans. But just like most of us manage to get by nonetheless, we here at Weekly World Central always manage to get the paper out.
And each and every week, it seems like a miracle.
