Small Triumphs

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—When you're stuck in a less-than-wholly-stimulating job, it's worth basking in the small triumphs.

Case in point: Remember those "skybox refers" I briefly discussed in this post from last year? Yesterday, I wrote this one for a story about a paper publisher who had recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection:

Maybe half an hour after I write that thing and see it cleared, one of my superiors comes up to me and asks me if I was the one who wrote it? "Yeah," I say in a slightly guarded voice, expecting to hear some criticism. "Good job," the editor proceeded to say. "We decided to change the headline of the story to that one."

On a day in which I was feeling especially crappy about things (not helped by the minor ruckus I caused when I inadvertently "spoiled" a supposed big plot point of the TV series Breaking Bad for a bunch of newbies at work, some of whom hadn't even heard of the show), hearing this compliment had the effect of brightening up my entire day.

Apparently I still am capable of stretching my creative muscles at this "job" every once in a while!

Link for the Day: A Look Inside My Place of Employment!

NEW YORK—If any of you are curious as to what the interiors of the office at which I work look like...well, look no further!

Photo credit: Albert Vecerka/ESTO

Last week, one of my co-workers showed me this article from a recent issue of the magazine Architectural Record, which evaluated the architectural worth of the design of the Dow Jones offices in the News Corp. building located in midtown Manhattan. I'm not as up on architecture in general as I should be (this despite all the time I spent reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead when I was in high school, LOL), so the article itself is of interest to me personally only insofar as it offers a fresh way of looking at the environment in which I work five days a week.

For the most part, though: Look at the pictures! That's where I work! Isn't it cool (imagine me saying that with John Travolta/Broken Arrow inflections)? Doesn't it remind you, at least in part, of 2001: A Space Odyssey with a pinch of Blade Runner?

(By the way: I posted this last week on my Facebook wall and my Twitter feed, so this is probably old news for those who follow me on both social-media platforms. But I meant to post the link on this blog as well, and am only now getting around to sharing it with the rest of world. 'Cause I'm sure there are some people out there who don't go on either Facebook or Twitter. Wherever they are...well, here you go.)

Sky-High Skyboxes!

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Okay, readers: For this post, I am taking all of you ever-so-briefly into my workplace, in a manner of speaking.

One of the many small tasks that I have gradually grown into as a news assistant at The Wall Street Journal is to write what are called "skybox refers": an informal term for the short items boxed off below the section banners at the top of the front page of each inside section, items which are meant to briefly summarize and refer to stories within that particular section. I try to pick up whatever skyboxes are available to write for the Money & Investing (C) section. It's not all that difficult, really; the main challenge is fitting pertinent information about a given story in a small space, and doing it in a way that will compel readers to turn to the story inside. In that respect, it's probably the closest I've come to writing headlines since I wrote them regularly as a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund copy-editing intern in summer 2007 (boy, that seems so long ago).

Considering the nature of the paper's famously sober style, there's not a whole lot of room to be too cutesy with these skybox refers; a lot of times, I merely end up borrowing a story's headline to fill in a skybox for that story. Every so often, though...inspiration strikes.

Inspiration struck last night as I was helping to put out today's paper. On page C2, there were two stories that dealt with the effects of the Euro zone's recently agreed-upon $40 billion aid package for Greece on U.S. Treasury markets and the euro. The markets-desk editor who chose the stories he wanted to mention in the skyboxes decided he wanted to have both those stories in the same skybox, one following the other. So I decided, instead of just repeating words in both—which would look awkward considering the proximity of both of the refers—I came up with this solution for the first two items:

Well, I thought it was a pretty creative solution—and today I got validation from a couple of higher-up markets-desk editors, both of whom complimented me on it.

So yeah, I'm showing it off. What of it? Might as well be proud of the work you do, even if it's small scale in the scheme of things.

And in case any of you might have been wondering what exactly I do for The Wall Street Journal five days a week...well, skybox refers aren't everything, obviously, but it's one of the more creative things I do.