Chapter One?
Here is a quick piece of something I’ve been working on. It’s eventually working its way into the shape of a memoir — albeit, a very different one than Gilbert’s “eat pray love.” It’s about my first year on the job, running a small newspaper on the Washington coast.
Blue Tongue
Today, I went to a management meeting. With a blue tongue.
It was a management meeting about our newspaper’s Web site, and it made me want to barf. The guy who manages the Web site sat back in his chair while he explained ad placement on a Web site. These advertisers paid more because their ad was placed on every page. Those advertisers got more click-thrus because they were located in the Real Estate section of the site.
While he talked, I found it increasingly difficult to look at the projected image on the wall. The ads, blocky and stacked in a cacophonous way, made my head spin. Flashing pictures of apples and pumpkins on a local grocer’s ad made me cringe.
The rest of the managers — other weekly editors, managing editor, IT manager and the publisher, perched at the head of the table and croaking his way through a cold, all ate it up.
“Wow, this stuff is really incredible,” John said, rocking back in his chair. “Isn’t it amazing how far the Internet has come?”
I felt the usual boredom of the generation gap looming closer, and so I reached into my purse and popped a blue raspberry Jolly Rancher into my mouth. Thus, the blue tongue.
John suddenly turned to me.
“Sara, what do you think of our Web site? Does it need an overhaul?”
“Yes.”
“What don’t you like about the site now?” he asked, and everyone looked on. I thought about being tactful, but decided I was probably the only hope they had of hearing what a young person thought.
“It makes me cringe,” I said.
Everyone sat silent for a moment, looking at the Web site up on the wall in the darkened conference room.
“It makes you cringe?” he asked.
I then started to explain that if they really wanted to market this thing to anyone, it had to be sleek and cool and really easy to navigate.
“Congratulations, Sara,” John said to me mid-sentence. “You just got yourself elected to the group that’s going to work on this redesign.”
At least I sounded credible, I thought to myself. It didn’t appear to me that anyone had spotted the blue tongue and taken my advice as adolescent — although let’s be honest, a little adolescent opinion is what they could really use right now.