Erik Martínez
North Hardin High School
The WKU Minority Journalism Workshop trip to the Daily News was unlike any of the other trips to various newspapers. The major difference being the fact that the Daily news was about half the size of the Lexington Herald-Leader or the Tennessean.
While other trips took several hours to tour the Daily News tour was over in a matter of 15 to 20 minutes. However, this didn't stop the workshoppers from learning some interesting facts.
"It was short but informative because I didn't really know about [the paper] and by going there I got an idea on how the whole process works." said Tytianna Wells.
Our designated tour guide for the day was a reporter by the name of Scott Sisco. Having been a participant in a Journalism camp at WKU and a WKU graduate, Sisco identified with the students on several different levels.
"I was also a part of a journalism camp after my junior year." he said. "I even met my wife for the first time there."
The first interesting thing was the fact that the Daily News had previous newspapers mounted on the walls. It was pretty amazing just to see how much the paper has changed in the last 50 years. Journalism student Tytianna Wells even pointed out one of the common spelling mistakes in older papers.
Another interesting thing was the fact that the Daily News' deadline for the next days paper is at 9:30a.m. for regular stories and 10:30a.m. for front page stories. Which is shocking considering that other larger papers' deadlines are about 12 hours later. If any stories develop after the deadline then they simply have to wait for the next days issue.
The Daily News' presses start at about noon when the workers leave for lunch and there is usually an issue of the next day's paper waiting for them on their desks when they return.
However small the Daily News may be, it doesn't take away from the whole Journalism experience. But it's like Scott Sisco said, "Even though I don't make a whole lot of money, I still love what I do."