/Karen/

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And it’s one step in front of another

Friday, 31 August, 2007

So it was back to work today, and I did lots of Briefing things. Briefing takes up 60% of my time. (Please bear with me with this next bit because I'm proud of my job.) I:

Edit and post CHN material just about every day I'm working (unless there's nothing in the locker to post). Occasionally I'll write one myself. (They always take longer than you think they will!);
Read, assess, print and log new articles that come in, and keep the database updated when Tony approves, rejects or sends things back for rewriting;
Correspond with potential authors on article ideas;
Chase commissions (that's when we've asked someone to write something. Writers need deadlines, and they'll usually produce if you crack the whip enough ;P);
Print reports for Tony on his Briefing thinking day so he can see what's already in the locker and where it's up to;
Read all Interchange letters (those are all the correspondence we received on The Briefing—ranging from the quiet letter of encouragement to the anonymous rant typed entirely in capitals). Then I usually send some of acknowledgement—e.g. “Thank you for your letter ...”. I'll also do some preliminary assessing too: if I think it's a letter we ought to include in the Interchange section of The Briefing, I'll flag it, but ultimately Tony gets the last word on the matter;
When Tony works out what goes in the next Briefing, I put it all together—do what's called “cleaning”—make it all conform to the Matthias Media house style. This includes Interchange, and CHN (I do the preliminary assessing of what makes it into the print Briefing and what doesn't, then Tony goes in and cleans it up. Occasionally he'll disagree with my assessment, throw something out and put something else in);
Tony will give me a layout of the issue, and I'll go through and add file numbers so our designer knows what goes on what page;
Edit about 80-90% of The Briefing—CHN (sort of since it's already been done when I put it online), Bookshelf, I give the Resource talk a once-over when Tony's done with it, all the feature articles, the Pastor's Brief (though this time around Tony's doing it), the Bible Brief, the Epilogue, and Interchange also gets a light sub just for obvious little things when I'm cleaning it. All articles need to be edited to fit the space they've been allocated in the layout;
Put together the contents page (but Tony writes the “In this issue” which is the hardest 200 words in the whole magazine. I've only done it twice);
Choose a range of cover images from stock photography which Tony then goes through and accepts/rejects. (That said, I did not choose the cover of the most recent Briefing! I think this month's cover image is funny, though).

When the editing's done, Emma takes over and sees the issue right through the layout and proofing process, and it usually doesn't enter my mind again until the real thing lands on my desk (ooh! ooh! So exciting!) Then we're usually in the middle of the next Briefing week—which, more often than not, overlaps with the first of the month. This means I then must:

Create cover images in .jpg form from the PDFs in three sizes: 200 x 257 pixels, 113 x 145 pixels and 79 x 101 pixels (these are for the online store and the Briefing front page;
Put up any web extras for the issue;
Add links to the e-Briefing which then gets uploaded to the store;
Add the print Briefing and e-Briefing to the online store and the Briefing front page (which includes the little excerpt box on the right);
Do the positions vacant ads (well, that happens every week on Fridays now);
Create the Briefing e-news in HTML and plaintext form. The e-news includes Tony's “In this issue” text which needs to be converted to HTML, and it includes Australian, US and UK prices for all products advertised, and links to the relevant stores (plus all links need to be coded properly so we can track how many get clicked). When the whole thing's finished (and it usually takes about 2-3 hours, depending on how tricky it is and how many changes have to be made since last time), I send it out. But Ian sends out the e-Briefing to subscribers, not me.

So today I got in to work just before 7:30 and started with CHN (editing what's in the locker and putting a new one online), then moved onto the list just above of Briefing #348-related things. I'm a day behind with Briefing editing—I still have one feature article to go (and it's four pages!!!) and the Bible Brief. I did manage to finish the Bookshelf piece before lunch. Elsie met with me in the morning instead of at 1:30, then Tony and I had a meeting just after lunch because I was stressed about how behind I was with all the things I'm supposed to be working on.

Ben was excited because Oliver O'Donovan was stopping by in the afternoon to be interviewed. (Ben is the founder of the Facebook group, “Disciples of Oliver O'Donovan”.) I left at around 3 and drove to counselling, then came back via Drummoyne to pick up Lizz, then drove to Kingsford to pick up Ben (who was still excited about O'Donovan). We drove home, then I put on make-up, and Lizz and I caught the train in to Town Hall. We had dinner at Sakae, then rushed to the Metro Theatre to get a good position. We ended up on the first step in front of the first tier and it wasn't too bad. Mr Percival was the support act and he did lots of interesting things on loops. I was impressed he got the entire audience to sing.

And then Katie Noonan came on with her band at 10 pm and played for about one and a half hours. She did almost every single song on Skin (except “Sunshine”). I think Lizz got a bit annoyed with me because I'd poke her excitedly and say, “Ooh, I like that one!” “Ooh, I like that one too!” “You like all of them!” she said at one point. “No I don't!” I said indignantly. She also did her “tribute” (not “cover”) of Leonard Cohen's “Hallelujah” and “Crazy” (which were both awesome), “Special Ones” accompanied just by electric guitar (and it was very angry and it surprised me how into it the crowd was), “Breathe in Now” during the encore, and I have to say I preferred the way she did “A Little Smile” tonight than on the album.

I was a little worried how the music would go in a venue like the Metro which is bigger and louder and a little more crass, but she did it really well—she dominated the stage and worked with her band to bring out their strengths. They were not the intimate ensemble that looked so comfortable jamming together onstage at The Vanguard; they looked more like punk rockers and they certainly played it more rock 'n roll, but that was okay and it worked. I missed her two back-up singers from The Vanguard—the keyboard player and the drummer both did back-up vocals—but she did have this awesome flautist who improvised, and her husband came out right at the very end to do jazz fillers on saxophone over “One Step”.

By the end, I had totally converted Lizz and she couldn't stop raving. Then she spotted Barry Otto (who stars in the video of “Time to Begin”) and Matthew Newton (who was in Looking for Alibrandi—he's the son of Bert Newton). They were standing with another lady in the bar area and there was virtually no one around. I urged Lizz to go up and get autographs. After much rummaging, I found a pen (writers never leave home without one!) and some paper. So she went up and got autographs and even had a bit of a conversation with them both. I was kicking myself for deciding not to bring my camera (I didn't because the Metro doesn't allow photography inside so I thought there was no point).

Then Hans came and picked us up. He dropped me home and I went online and stupidly checked my email which automatically downloads work stuff. *Sigh!* So many irksome things ... I'll deal with them next week.

/Karen/ had a thought at 11:00 AM | | EE comments (2)

Posted in: Story of my life