Deadlines Roasting on an Open Fire

Happy holidays!

Now, back to business. While we're all subject to the cold weather and yule tide cheer that will inevitably swallow campus in a sea of red and green soon, we're hard at work.

Despite how you might have seen me sleeping on an office chair, head down on the table or a desk or on the love seat in the offices, we actually, indeed, do work at The News Record. A lot of it happens at around 6 p.m., though, so you might already be back in your cozy dorm/apartment/house/car/bar while we're starting to really get into it.

I will say this, though, we are going to have one heck of a tabloid for the winter break. I can already imagine all sorts of beautiful things. I'm going to push it to turn out something magazine-like since, well, it's basically going to be out there for a month.

Good luck on your exams. (And, for the love of everything jolly, wish me good luck on mine.)

Only a few more weeks until we're free to be trapped in our house by the blizzards to come. Lovely!

-Gin

News hangover

Well, the elections are now over and I have a hangover — news hangover, that is.

There is only so much relevant news that can be placed into a college newspaper. The elections gave us a wealth of that news. We were able to effectively inform students about local candidates while allowing them to personally see those candidates through our stories.

But now that it's over, we are back to the drawing board.

I had essentially set up, back in the summer, my coverage plan for news in the months leading to election day. It worked out pretty much according to plan, too.

Now, however, is when the rubber meets the road. It's where we earn our stripes as journalists.

We have to now dig for stories — they won't be gift-wrapped like the myriad of candidates we covered previously.

We'll have the occasional student or professor drop a tip in our lap, but that is rare. Most on campus view us with as much favor as cops do internal affairs.

It can be a disconcerting effort at times, but it is the nature of the beast.

Here's to hoping the beast doesn't eat us alive over the winter.

-James

Surviving the Horrors of War

I woke up to an e-mail today. It was from a man in Indiana — from the CANDLES Holocaust Museum — thanking me for running a story about a Holocaust survivor. Not just a Holocaust survivor, a survivor of Auschwitz. Which is, honestly, far more terrifying than most places on earth.

It was a left rail story. We didn't get a lot of space for coverage. And it was just a few hundred words. It, by any real means, wasn't a particularly in-depth story or one that probably got the top hits on the website, but it's a story that needs to be told.

I honestly believe that I will never be able to tell a story regarding personal experiences that is more horrifying, harrowing or inhumane than surviving Auschwitz.

No way.

It's humbling to think people survived that. Didn't give up. Survived and told people about it.

I feel like, for stories like that, we're merely conduits for their stories and — frankly, it's a lovely feeling.

-Gin

Election Night Blues

Election nights are fun. Well, kind of. They show you what it's like to be in the big time — the people we cover are being mentioned on MSNBC and FOX and all — and how to hustle. We got a one hour, 15 minute deadline extension.

What does that mean? It means I didn't get to sleep until 3 a.m. last night. It means that I was following election results to self-analyze the results to see how the House of Representatives in both Ohio and the country would look Wednesday.

The short answer? Red.

I consider myself apolitical. It's not like I don't care about the country, Washington, D.C. or my rights as an American, but, well, honestly, I firmly believe that there is nothing more partisan than voting for a candidate. You're helping them get into office, if they win. And, last night, it really proved my point.

Photo editor Eamon Queeney and I drove up to Blue Ash to attend Democratic Ohio Congresswoman Connie Pillich's watch party. With 100 percent of precincts voting, it was a tie. In percentages. The difference was five votes in Pillach's favor (despite a phone call she received that said otherwise).

What does that mean? It could mean that five journalists — or student journalists — cast their votes for Ms. Pillich and helped her defeat Republican candidate Mike Wilson. And no matter how you see it, or perhaps it's just the way I do, there is nothing more partisan than that.

Other than that, it was a pretty standard election night. No real relevant issues to the bulk of University of Cincinnati students and the people we covered, we've written about in the weeks leading up to Nov. 2.

But there is something funny about the way watch parties go. It's like a sports game. People cheering when they saw a Democrat win and seething when they heard Kasich was ahead in the results. Well, it's understandable since politics is something that can affect all of us at some minute or grand level.

It's quite a spectacle. If you've never been to a party like that, I would recommend it to see the way people react and the way people behave. Attempting to stay objective commands a mastery of speech and the way you carry yourself. It's not as though I had voted for Wilson and was behind enemy lines or anything of the sort, but it's still a moral tightrope. Stay calm and stoic in the face of celebration. Stay calm and stoic in an environment dissatisfaction. Just stay calm and stoic.

-Gin