Issue 2 – The Quindecim, The Independent Student Newspaper of Goucher College
We published the second issue of The Quindecim last Monday, although it should have arrived to campus the Friday before. My Editors and I spent two sleepless nights laying out the paper, correcting for mistakes, and tweaking the design. We sent the paper to press on Thursday morning, which normally ensures delivery to campus on Friday morning.
The paper was delivered on time, but the 1,500 copies we ordered all looked horrible. Photos were dark, individual pages had pink and yellow tints to them, and several of the section headers were covered with blue stains. I quickly hid all 1,500 copies in our office so that nobody on campus would see them.
Our printer told me they would be able to reprint it for Monday, but wouldn’t be able to deliver it until Wednesday. So, on Monday, I drove through a huge rainstorm to pick up the papers myself.
Luckily, it was only two days late so nobody was too upset.
Besides the printing lapse, I’m very happy with this issue as a whole. There are several things that really separate this one from the first issue we put out this year. Primarily, the content is better. The articles are well written, and the copy editing was nearly flawless. We’ve only found a few small mistakes and typos throughout the issue. Second, this issue includes four advertisements for local businesses, which has allowed us to get The Quindecim out into the larger Towson community. I received a text message from a Goucher student congratulating me because he saw a non-Goucher student walking around Towson with a copy of The Q. He said he thought he’d never see the day.
As a whole, these changes allowed us to print a very complete 20 page issue, rather than our usual 16 page standard.
We still need to do a better job of making sure all articles come in by deadline so that we can avoid having to pull consecutive all-nighters to get it to press on time. Deadline week is again upon us for Issue 3, so I hope this time it goes more smoothly.