The Mount Carmel journalism class took a field trip to the Chicago Tribune Tower on April 19th. The Caravan staff toured the building and sat in on an Editorial Board meeting that determines which stories to highlight on the main page of their website.

During the tour MC journalists saw the different areas where Tribune reporters and editors work to produce content for the business, politics, metro, arts & culture, and sports areas of coverage. It was interesting to understand the factors that led to placing different articles on the “front page.”  One of the MC students observed, “Wow, this meeting went by so quickly,” which prompted  all of the Tribune editors to laugh. One commented that, “Actually, this meeting was a very slow one.”

For an organization that is high-tech, it was surprising to see that the editorial board relies on post-it notes to organize the placement of articles.  Once the post-it note is labeled with a story headline, they determine the time it will be posted on-line from four time slots:  5 a.m., 8 a.m., 12pm, and 6pm.  At each of those checkpoints, the website is updated with fresh articles. The late night to early morning articles stay up longer because you’re less likely to read it at 3 a.m. than 9 a.m. Once these logistics are figured out, it isn’t long before the article goes up. The whole point of this system is to make sure they always have new articles going up on their website and nothing considered “old news” stays on for a long time.

The articles under consideration already have been written and edited at least three times. Everything is ready to go when the editors say so. The whole atmosphere of the Tribune newsroom was quite exciting. Hearing the police scanner blaring out calls, seeing people rush in and out of the office amidst the occasional loud conversation or laughter, and actually seeing what goes inside of a huge newspaper was inspiring to the Caravan staff.

As a bonus, before we even entered Tribune Tower, we met prominent columnist John Kass on the Michigan Avenue sidewalk.  Kass was friendly and interested in who we were and inquired about the kinds of stories we were interested in covering.

The trip to the Tribune offices was actually the second newspaper the Caravan staff visited last week, having toured the offices of the University of Chicago “Maroon” on Monday, April 18. The current Maroon editor in chief, Forrest Sill, met with our group and gave the inside scoop about how a college newspaper is run. Not surprisingly, it is similar to the Chicago Tribune but on a smaller scale. Like the Trib, the Maroon even uses post-its for articles and they meet every week to discuss their print layouts.

These two experiences really showed the Caravan staff what it takes to be in the field of journalism. Late nights, putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, writing nonstop – these are just a few things that these writers  and editors have done for their whole careers. In this field you really have to love what you do on a daily basis.

At the conclusion of the Tribune visit, The Caravan enjoyed an extended conversation with Tribune Ethics and Standards Editor Meredith Friedburg, who offered the group the following advice:  to be a successful journalist and make a real contribution, you’ll need two qualities:  “curiosity and compassion.”