The first couple of days

Wednesday, 9:45 p.m.
Here at the Edge-of-America Beacon, we're ready for war. It's an hour and 15 minutes past the deadline Bush set for Saddam to take his vacation. Saddam has decided to stay at work, we're told, so war is imminent.

Imminent. Imminent. Imminent ... but apparently not happening yet. My design staff has one extra person tonight, thanks to the designer who volunteered to come back from a seminar at which I wish she could have stayed. I told her a half-hour ago to go on home and be ready to come back in early in the morning in case we put out an extra. She said, "OK; I gotta answer a few e-mails first."

We've put together a huge special section that is set to appear in the paper the day after the war starts. We have it ready to be in tomorrow's paper. I have to call the pressroom at 9:45 p.m. to tell them to run it or hold it.

I have the phone in my hand, ready to make the call to tell them to hold it.

10:10 p.m. Wednesday
Various upper managers are making decisions. We have a plan, but, as something I read earlier today stated so well, "A military plan is followed right up to the time bullets are fired." We're adding six -- no wait, make that eight -- no, let's make it 12 pages to the paper. It's not like we just have to fill those 12 pages, however ... the 14 existing pages will be affected, also, because the pages have to be tucked into the front of the section. Even pages that have long since been finished have to be redone -- some just to change the page number, most to accommodate stories that have to move from Page One or in some other way. The designer who came back from the seminar just answered her last e-mail.

I call the pressroom to ask if the press is running with the special section. "You told us to hold it," they said. "No," I said, "I didn't. I told the guy in the pre-press area to roll it." I said Go, they heard Whoa. "Well, I'll have to talk to my supervisor," press guy says. "Go ahead," I said. "It has to go either way."

The computer system through which we do our pages is waiting for the update from the advertising folks. We can't start on anything until the pages are ready. We wait, wait, wait, wait ... still waiting to get the signal. We finally get started on the big remake about 10:35.

TO: Designers
FM: me
DATE: Wednesday, March 19, 2003, 10:36 PM
SUBJECT: You'll find this funny

All pages must be gone by 12:20. -thanks, rj

12:44 a.m., Thursday
An Upper Manager is doing laps around the newsroom, trying to inventory how many pages have still not been sent to the pressroom. She's on her 23rd lap, and she's asking me for the 23rd time. In my mind, I say, you know, the pages aren't going to get out faster if you ask more often. It's just adding to already intense stress. By my rough count, we still have 10 pages waiting to go. The copy desk is moving stories through as fast as they possibly can. Four people from the pressroom are up in the newsroom watching us work. I wonder why they aren't in the pressroom, waiting to press the button. Maybe they're up here confirming that we're still actually working on the pages, that we didn't decide to just throw up our hands and go home. I wonder if that wouldn't have been the better decision.

Adding to the confusion: the old pages maintained their old page numbers in the system; the new numbers are lost in some system-related ether. Page 15 is really Page 5. Page 7 is now Page 19. Page 6 is now Page 6.1.

Here comes the Upper Manager again. I prepare to give her the same answer I gave her two minutes ago.

1:10 a.m., Thursday
For some reason, Page One is stuck on the designer's computer screen. He keeps hitting the Go button, and nothing is happening. The Upper Managers, the pressroom folks and one lone systems person are standing over his screen. In the interim, I catch a potential really serious error on a proof. The Upper Managers get bored with the system problem and go look for somebody to fire. The systems person figures out the problem and says, "Go." I say, "Whoa." We fix the mistake -- which would not have been fixed had the system not glitched -- and we go. Not even an hour late. I'm really happy about that.

1:50 a.m. Thursday
The papers are back from the pressroom. The Upper Managers thumb through them quickly and go home. We're coming back at 6:30 to put out a 12-page Extra. I express surprise that, in the hubbub of all that was going on, we weren't being interrupted with constant updates. "Is that all there was?" I ask. One small strike, apparently aimed directly at Saddam and his goons. This wasn't exactly Shock and Awe. The guy on TV says for the 300th time, "This isn't exactly Shock and Awe."

I spent the next hour or so setting up our Extra for tomorrow afternoon.

5:30 a.m. Thursday
After a 90-minute nap, I'm headed back in to put out our 12-page Extra. I check the Web for updates; strangely, there are none. As I pilot the Oldsmobile through the dark neighborhood streets, I note with puzzlement that the news radio guys are talking about non-war related stories. I wonder why we're doing this.

7 a.m. Thursday
Apparently the Upper Managers wondered, too. The 12-page edition is now eight pages. We're doing it basically because we can. We get it out 20 minutes past the 10 a.m. deadline. I get some marching orders for the rest of the day, one of which is, "Go home and get some rest." At a little before noon, I take The Boss up on that.

5 p.m. Thursday
The crew is in. We're back and ready to put out another edition, waiting for the update that never comes. No shock. No awe. A helicopter crash, which is par for the course. We steer the huge edition home basically on time. I go home to get some much-needed sleep, knowing that my grip on reality is tenuous.

11 a.m. Friday
The Wife notes, in her typical knife-through-the-crap manner, "this is a boring war. We've had fights more exciting than this."

1 p.m. Friday
I'm interrupted as I write the "7 a.m. Thursday" entry above. I find myself saying, "son of a bitch," without realizing I had even said it. My TV screen is exploding in massive fireballs. The commentators have stopped speaking, like they do during sporting events when the crowd goes nuts. It's scaring the goddamn hell out of me, like it was happening outside my own window rather than on the other side of the world.

I'm now officially shocked, and awed. And reminded of how motherfucking awful this whole thing is.