Guest Blog: Working at the YDN

Editor's note: This blog is by Harrison Korn, a sophomore in Saybrook and one of the science tour guides.

Working for the Yale Daily News, the oldest (and according to the Princeton Review, best!) college daily, has been an incredibly rewarding experience for me.

As a freshman, I started at the YDN (what most people on campus call the Yale Daily News) as a production and design (P&D) assistant. Two days a week I went to the YDN building (yes, we have our own building) and worked a two hour shift (usually from 8-10 pm or 10 pm-12 am) designing the next day's paper. My amazing editors and other P&D staffers taught me so much about design (for instance, what is a pica?) and about life.

Most of the amazing YDN P&D staff and editors at the annual YDN banquet

Working at the YDN has a lot of perks, one of which is lots of food. Every night the YDN has sushi, Thai food, pizza, etc. I picked which days of the week I went in based on the food that night (I usually chose sushi nights).

One of the highlights of my YDN experience was working on the redesign of the paper last summer. Mario Garcia (who has designed over 500 papers, including the latest redesign of the Wall Street Journal) and Pegie Stark Adam were hired to redesign the YDN. On Memorial Day weekend, I went to New York City along with most of the YDN design staff (paid for by the YDN) to meet with Garcia and see the initial prototypes of the redesign.

Over the next three months we went through prototype after prototype to get the design just r ight. Every little thing (should sports headlines be centered or left justified?) was thought about. Over those three months I learned more about fonts than I thought I would ever know.

In case you were curious, which I am sure you are, the YDN now uses three fonts: Moderno (for headlines), Quiosco (for body copy), and Benton Sans (for captions).

The best part about working on the redesign was for one week before the dorms opened in August the entire design team came back to campus to be trained in the redesign. The YDN put us up in the New Haven Hotel (and paid for all our meals so we obviously went to eat at nice restaurants) while we worked with Peggy and Mario to make the final redesign decisions and learn how to work with the new design.

This year, in addition to design work, I became more involved with reporting. The great thing about reporting for the YDN is that you can get involved as little or as much as you want. As a freshman, you typically start out as a general assignment reporter. You can write three times a week, once a month, or anywhere in between. After spending the afternoon writing your story, you come into the building and sit down with an editor. Together, you go over the story and work to polish it up. I am constantly amazed at how my editors' small changes always make my writing so much better!

Sophomore year, many reporters choose to get a specific "beat," or area of the University that you specialize in covering. Beats range from covering the University President (my suitemate Paul has this beat so he talks to President Levin frequently, usually at 9 pm) to covering Admissions to covering New Haven City Hall politics.

Being a YDN reporter also has some nice perks. For the elections, the YDN sent Paul to Arizona to report on John McCain's concession speech. We sent three other reporters to Chicago, another reporter to Virginia, and another to Nebraska (where a Yalie was running for Congress). One reporter even went to Wasilla, Alaska (Sarah Palin's hometown).

A picture Paul took while in Arizona to cover John McCain for the YDN

In addition to P&D and reporting, I also dabbled with the YDN online desk. For the online desk I videotaped events and edited the footage for the website. A huge perk of this was I got into events (in order to tape them) that I otherwise would have never gotten into (like the Denzel Washington Master's Tea last year in SM).

P&D, reporting, and online are just three of the many ways to get involved in the YDN. YDN also has copy staffers (who write the headlines, captions, and make sure the articles conform to Associated Press-style standards), photographers, and there is Scene (a special section that comes out every Friday) where there is lots of opportunity to get involved if you want to write theater/music/food reviews or be a little more creative.

The absolute best thing about the YDN is the people. YDN is not all work. There are plenty of fun events to get to know all the other YDN people - I met many of my best friends at Yale through the YDN.

The editor-in-chief and one of the city desk editors prepare for the YDN holiday party.

I strongly encourage all of you to look into getting involved in the oldest college daily. If you have any questions, feel free to message me!