Weekend edition

An editor's job is never done.
This weekend, I have slept for about 22 hours because I'm coughing so much that my friends are afraid that I'm dying. (Health Services, in their infinite wisdom, told me to pick up some Sudafed. Thanks, Health Services.)
But last night, I was pulled out of bed for Spectator's annual fund raiser, the Blue Pencil Dinner, where we invite our alumni to pay lots of money for a greasy steak and wine and to hear a speaker.
Due to an issue with seating arrangements, I ended up at a table with several former managing editors, none of whom I knew. The nice thing about talking with alumni is that you can hear all of the dirt that institutional knowledge has failed to pass on about people like former president George Rupp and Austin Quigley. I got a chance to talk to the Managing Editor from 1984 about Barack Obama, the ME from 2001 about reporting on Sept. 11, 2001, and also had a conversation about possible future career paths for students who spend 40 hours per week on Spectator (not one was unemployed--good sign!).
After former Spec Editor-in-Chief Steve Moncada talked about the state of the paper (in case you're wondering, our Web site sucks, our content is good, our new magazine is phenomenal, and our paper is an important voice in the campus community, so sayeth Steve), Janice Min, Editor-in-Chief of Us Weekly, gave one of the most interesting speeches I've heard in quite some time about the tabloidization of culture. Her argument was two-fold: First, the entertainment industry is one worth $29 billion per year, and as something that is that important, it makes sense to scrutinize its leaders as much as we would any other multi-billion dollar industry; Second: Just as it's the job of Vanity Fair and Us Weekly to scrutinize the entertainment industry, it's the job of CNN and co. to scrutinize politicians and politics, but when they fail to do so, the country is made worse off.
Made it back to bed last night at 11:30 for tea and West Wing reruns. Tonight, gonna be on until the paper goes to bed. Yay.

Photo courtesy of MediaBistro.