One of my favorite questions after people learn I work at a university: How do you like having summers off?
Answer: If that ever happens, I’ll let you know.
In years past, a healthy number of students were on campus taking classes and student media produced a summer edition of the BG News. Those days are long behind us.
During summer months, the campus isn’t dead but it certainly isn’t bustling like it does during the rest of the year. There are any number of camps (including our first one of the summer with the second one too follow soon), orientation groups roll past the Kuhlin Center, and maintenance crews are constantly taking care of the grounds.
The student media offices are busy, too. For starters, we’re doing something we haven’t done in quite some time – creating fresh content for the website and social media channels all summer long. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Our intrepid team just put the finishing touches on the annual Best of BG magazine, where students pick the area’s best in areas ranging from best slice of pizza to best spot for a first date. The magazine will be mailed directly to all incoming students as an introduction to all the university and community have to offer, and delivered to key spots across town.
Our lead content executive Brandon Loe worked on the magazine as part of his summer internship and as we were winding down production quipped, “I have a whole new respect for what it takes to put this together.”
Indeed, it’s a mountain of work but it’s not all we’ve been up to this summer
At the same time, we’re working on an exciting interactive web component for Best of BG which we expect to be live before the end of the year.
New BG News Editor-In-Chief Makenna Flores as well as managing editor Laura Sandlin, news director Blake Pierce, sports content director Steve Iwanek, and Brandon huddled together to work through some design and organizational changes to the newspaper. They also put a lot of hard work into planning content for the Fall. The result should not only be better and more consistent content but also a newspaper more people will pick up and a website people will visit more often.
There’s also a lot of behind-the-scenes work. We’re retiring our old customer billing system and working into a new project management system we will have implemented by the time school starts. We’re also implementing a digital asset manager to make it easier to handle the growing number of files produced by our design team. No small task to say the least.
Our BG Authors website continues to enjoy new content every week thanks to the hard work of intern Jay Flood, who will transition to a promotions internship focusing on Falcon Radio come Fall.
Meanwhile in sports, we’re continuing the evolution of BGRSO to the Falcon Media Sports Network not just with swag and social media assets, but with a theme song and sonic to accompany audio and video broadcasts. Think of SportsCenter and what do you hear? Yep, that’s what we’re shooting for.
All of this needs to wrap up in the next few weeks because when August arrives, we will be working in earnest to prepare for the Fall semester, including 12 editions of the BG News, 10 episodes of the BG24 broadcast, dozens of live sporting events broadcasts, hundreds of social media posts, and, of course, 24/7 Falcon Radio streams.
How’s it feel to have summers off? We may never know.