Cyndi Cassedy, the Sentinel’s right-hand woman, was just beginning to paste up page 2 when I arrived to interrupt her. It was a little past 11 a.m. on a Thursday.
“I’ve done my PSAs,” she tells me, gesturing to several squares of text on the screen in front of her.
She explains that she received several blurbs and then rewrote them to reflect the modified AP style internally referred to as “Sentinel style.”
“And then they’re on file here,” she says of the modified submissions, moving her cursor over her open file explorer. “I then transfer them over to my page.” She drags a PSA onto the page she’s working on, maneuvering between her file explorer and Adobe InDesign on her single monitor.
The PSA materializes in the InDesign window, joining a smattering of others. “It looks like a mess,” she says, “but it is organized. It’s organized in my brain.”
The PSAs are just one part of Cassedy’s everyday duties, which also include layout of approximately half the paper’s pages, communication with reporters working remotely, management of the daily story editing process, and review of externally submitted materials, including classified ads, letters to the editor, and press releases.
But right now, Cassedy is focused on page layout.
“I typically will put on [PSAs for] things that are happening today, tomorrow, the next day, as many as I can. I don't have the ads on here yet,” she says, gesturing to her screen.
She says the rest of the page comes together after the ads are in place, explaining that they dictate much of the page’s spacing.
“So this is what I'm doing,” she says, turning back to look at me. “That, and I'm always in contact with the reporters.”
She tells me that the reporters will text her with what they’re working on that day, as well as when a story is ready for review by editors Thad and Sandy Poulson. She points to a story in the online queue as she explains. “The story is edited, and it [goes] back to the reporter, and then when it comes back, Marshall [Barg, layout specialist,] pastes it up, usually on the front page, or I put it on the inside. That's the process.”
“So you're, like, the air traffic controller of the newsroom,” I say.
“Yes,” Cassedy replies. “That's a very good way to put it.”
“And how long have you been working at the Sentinel?” I ask.
“Oh, let me see,” says Cassedy, before thinking for a minute. “August 8th, 1988. That was the day.” She turns back to her page.
“How many of the paper’s pages do you usually lay out?” I ask.
“I would do the inside pages, except for the sports and features, and then the back page,” she says. “So, about three pages.”
Three pages is half of the paper, most days.
“You know, on Friday, we have more pages,” Sandy—who sits at a desk across from Cassedy—chimes in. “So she does more [on Fridays]. She is pretty remarkable.”
It’s a compliment Cassedy refuses. “That's what all my 30 years will do,” she says. “I think it must keep my brain young. It's almost like a jigsaw puzzle.”
