When you work at a newspaper, most of the job comes down to filling holes.
There are blank spaces on every page that have to be filled with stories, pictures and advertisements before the paper can go to press. You also have to make sure you don’t leave holes in the stories themselves. Your job is to think of the questions readers will ask and make sure they’re answered.
If you write “somebody got a grant to do stuff at the airport,” the obvious holes are who got the grant, who’d they get it from, how much was it and what are they actually going to do. You need to fill those holes before you write the story and put it on a page.
Got 15 minutes with nothing to do? That’s a hole in your schedule. Fill it with something that moves you closer to meeting your deadline.
That’s literally your job. Fill the holes. My tongue takes this job seriously. One of my fillings had popped out, leaving a hole in my tooth that my tongue absolutely refused to leave alone. No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, my tongue kept poking at that little crater like it was being paid by the hour. I’m convinced there’s a part of the human brain wired specifically to investigate dental damage with the tongue.
Eventually it drove me crazy enough that I scheduled a dentist appointment, because my tongue wanted that hole filled.
Normally I wouldn’t do that on a Thursday. That’s the day I start putting together the Tensas Gazette, but it was just replacing an old filling in a tooth that didn’t even hurt. Much. Piece of cake. Like most of my plans, it fell apart as soon as a second person got involved. The dentist took a closer look and discovered the tooth was cracked straight through. There was nothing to be done but pull it.
Modern dentistry is pretty good about pain while they’re working on you, and Jennifer Boles is a great dentist. I felt so good after the tooth was pulled, I told her not to bother with the pain killers. I’m a pretty tough guy and it was just a tooth, right?
Yeah, I’m an idiot, but fortunately, Dr. Boles is used to working with tough, dumb guys and gave me a prescription for hydrocodone anyway, warning me Thursday might not be too bad but the next day is when the pain starts.
It turns out that’s like saying they’re doing a little construction out at Holly Ridge. Friday arrived with the sort of blinding, vision-blurring pain that makes a person reconsider every life choice that led them to that moment.
This fiasco, for example, started with the horrendous life choice that I just had to have a box of Milk Duds. I’d forgotten why I stopped eating them until I was crunching on my own filling the other day. If I ever meet the man who invented Milk Duds, I’m going to punch him in the face.
As I sat there staring at the computer screen waiting for the words to stop blurring and dancing enough to be sure the headlines actually said what I thought they said, holding an ice pack to my cheekbone with one hand and cold shaking Tylenol with the other, I was reminded of a line from a John Updike novel.
Updike once described a newspaper editor preparing to hang himself by writing the man’s “heart was no longer in it but with the methodical determination that had put ten thousand papers to bed ...”
Deadlines don’t care how you feel. Pages still need to be proofed. Stories still need to be placed. Ads have to land where they belong. All those stupid, annoying holes have to be filled.
So the pages got finished, the Gazette went to press and another week’s paper made its way into print right on schedule even if I don’t quite remember all of it.
Once you’ve filled enough holes, finishing the job becomes a habit.
I fully expect that one day they’ll find my body slumped over my desk with my hand still resting on the mouse and the cursor hovering over the “send” button.
I personally think leaving my tombstone blank would be funny, but when I pitched the idea to my wife and daughter, they disapproved strongly.
I’ve already written the headline for my headstone: “Here lies Darryl Riser in the last hole he will fill.”
Darryl Riser is editor of the Richland Beacon-News.
