By Adam Robak
and Leo Shaw
Editors-in-Chief
For the staff of every passing year, producing La Vista is a labor of love. And if that’s a cliché, it’s an apt one; there is a professional level of reporting and editing that goes on in room six, as well as a familial bond.
A word of advice is scrawled on the desk in one of our offices that reads, “You manage chaos; contribute, don’t create.” It has been our pleasure and pride to manage that chaos as it has produced a year of excellent student journalism.
There is another quote somewhere in the room that shouts, “Even if you try to succeed, you’ll probably FAIL!” This has also rung true. There hasn’t been a staff of La Vista in recent years that hasn’t set its goals too high, and we’re no exception.
We came into this year with a list of ideas longer than Obama’s campaign platform, succeeding in some areas and faltering in others.
This year was the second of our website’s infancy, and it is crawling when it probably should be starting to walk. We haven’t delivered on consistent daily updates or a full integration of social media, and our timely online news coverage has been spotty at best.
Still, as the several comments, Facebook shares and Huffington Post story to our breaking coverage of the Snoop Dogg story have illustrated, our web presence is growing fast.
On the other hand, the physical paper looks better than ever. We are printing multiple, thoughtful staff editorials each issue, informative and timely news and more thorough sports coverage than ever.
The job of managing La Vista’s production cycle and planning its long-term development is an almost Sisyphean struggle, from issue to issue and year to year. When we bring up the quality of content in most sections, the few that need work stick out, and when our reporting shines, we look to improve our editing.
Even the pride of a freshly printed paper only lasts until the next story conference, when we start pushing the boulder back uphill.
So as we hand off the reigns to a new management staff that will be sure to move La Vista to unimaginable heights despite their impending over-planning and difficulties, we can reflect on our experiences here in room six and at Mira Costa.
Our time here at Mira Costa has largely been defined by this strangely consuming newspaper, and we have had a hand in its growth from a nerdy print-only publication to a multimedia organization. We’ve labored through the 2 a.m. production nights, frantic days stemming from a breaking news story, and the long editorial meetings.
As these experiences come to a close, and we stop obsessing over miniscule Costa administrative policy decisions and school board meetings, we can only hope that we made a positive impact, however big, on this organization and Mira Costa as a whole.
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