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By Neil Protacio
Editor in Chief 2012

The two journalism classes (writers and photographers) that make up the staff of the Courier had just wrapped their last meeting of the semester June 7 when news began breaking of a criminal investigation of two senior college officials.
As staffers were preparing for finals and summer vacation, their journalistic instincts took over.

Twenty minutes before President Mark Rocha began his arranged news conference downstairs from the newsroom, the Courier published its first breaking news alert to its online readers. The rest is PCC history.

The breaking news came just as staff writers and photographers were recovering from the most arduous print production night in recent memory. As is customary, on the Wednesday evening we had just completed the preparations for the printed newspaper when a commotion erupted at the Board of Trustees meeting across the hallway from the newsroom.

We could hear the uproar. A decision was made to delay sending the files to the printer, and staff members scrambled to cover the unfolding drama. At 9 p.m. the existing front page was scrapped and the revised version made it to the press about an hour later.

Exhaustion on Thursday was not an option. As the historic events cascaded one atop each other, Courier staffers snapped images, wrote copy and published it immediately online, working until late in the evening.

Friday morning saw an almost full complement of staff in the newsroom. Instead of working on the Journalism final, however, they were researching, reporting, writing and photographing stories relating to the bribery investigation. Soon, they began to chat on our internal network about putting out a special edition, even though the semester was all but over and all scheduled newspapers had been published.

At around noon, Courier Adviser Warren Swil announced that permission had been granted to publish a print version of the paper the following week, if the staff wished. “It’s entirely up to you,” he wrote in an email message to the staff.

Each staff member was asked to immediately make a commitment to participate in the print edition, and by 5 p.m. Friday, 17 had signed up.

Show time!

More than half the staffers cleared their schedules to attend a planning meeting on Saturday, and work began in earnest. The first major story, “Campus community shocked, saddened by criminal probe,” was published by mid-afternoon.

Working late into the night, Courier staffers dug into the archives to assemble the second major piece.

Meanwhile, an email was received that alerted editors to another breaking development: “President takes over Facilities Services Department” was published mid-afternoon on Sunday, the first time since 1915 that the Courier has published anything on Sunday.

On Monday the staff put their shoulders to the wheel, and if you have been following our web edition, you know the results.

The news has been breaking so fast, we have been sprinting to bring it to you as it happens. As I write this, I and incoming 2012-13 Editor in Chief Nicholas Saul have just returned from an hour-long on-camera interview with college President Mark Rocha.

The bulletin and a photograph have already been published online. The rest of the story appears elsewhere in this paper.

For those of us in the Journalism class and on the paper, this has been a learning experience in so many facets of reporting, writing, editing and publishing that no amount of classroom instruction could ever equal. It has also become a memory all of us will take with us throughout the rest of our lives.

It has been a privilege to serve the PCC community in this unprecedented time, and we hope to see the Courier continue to provide important news in a timely manner in print and online for many years to come.

 

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