images courtesy of The Weekly/Alyssa Wells

Being editor of "The Weekly," the culture section of the Daily Northwestern, has felt like my own personal Highlander—battling journalism student after journalism student, scaling the hierarchy of Medill to the top of the mountain to chop the head off my foe, ingest his or her wisdom, and finally, be the one, he who will lead Northwestern students to unexplored lands of knowledge and understanding of the world around us (or Evanston, as it’s known on this campus). It was a long fight to the top, and after three years of writing and assistant editing and holding my ground for the moment I could apply myself, my chance came—I filled out the application, sent it in, and waited to hear back.

Surprisingly, no one else applied – unsurprisingly, I got the job.

But no matter. Every would-be editor has their own vision, like Alexander the Great’s vision to unite the world beneath the Macedonian flag, or Aaron Sorkin’s vision to make American TV watchers actually care about politics with The West Wing. As a campus publication, the standards of "The Weekly" would be lesser than those of Vanity Fair, but hopefully higher than Star or Weekly World News. The most important thing at first was finding a staff of people I wanted to work with; visions of media domination and breaking stories – perhaps an exposé on dorm food – would come later.

Journalism students are roughly sorted into three groups: visionaries, work horses, and in-betweeners. The visionaries want to sit over coffee and discuss departments while doing a lot of scribbling, and the work horses think that a miserable newspaper is somehow a more authentic one, but the in-betweeners? They enable journalism and make it fun/important/revelatory/whatever you want to call it. They’re the Michael Corleones of campus media, who think outside of the box yet aren’t so unfocused that they'll fall apart after the first taste of independence. With a staff of yes men looking to do it by the book, we would produce nothing fresh or interesting. I had three main positions to fill: A managing editor, who would basically serve as my second-in-command, my consigliere, and two assistant editors who would divvy up the sections of the paper, the “front-of-the-book” and the “back-of-the-book.”

I found my managing editor quickly, a girl who hungers for the story more than any journalist I’ve met, capable of completing long cover stories on a short deadline and calling sources over and over until they are able to talk. With a perfectionist’s eye, I knew she would be able to reign in my excesses or negligence if they arose, and that because of our friendship, she would be able to be forward with me and likewise. We had a preliminary meeting about our ideas for the paper, and sketched out a rough outline that got the both of us excited.

For my back-of-the-book editor, I enlisted a girl I knew who was an in-betweener, leaning more towards the workhorse type but who was interested enough in the arts to not have to be coddled. For my front-of-the-book editor, I went to a sophomore who was very talented but also very rough around the edges, having had deadline troubles as a freshman writer. Still, she was incredibly eager to take the position, and I decided that it would be a good learning course for her and the paper, as she was one of several candidates to take over serious editorial duties in the next year or two.

This core of three, along with a designer, would be the people who worked in the office every week. We would have another editor for the website, but he would work from home. Most important was the ability of the main editors to work together. They all loosely knew each other, but I knew and trusted all of them. I knew I could be terse and not expect drama; I knew I wouldn’t take offense to any umbrage they took with my direction, and that most importantly, they were capable of having fun. Keeping good morale among your troops is perhaps the most important part of being an editor; they have to believe that their job matters, that it’s worth doing, and that hopefully, it’s a lot of fun to do.

My staff was picked. Making the paper came next.