From the Daily Northwestern, I'm Nick Allison. This is The Weekly, a podcast that breaks down our top headlines each week. This week, for the first recap of the quarter, I spoke with digital managing editor and middle sophomore Eric Ashmitt and photo editor and middle freshman Kimberly Espinosa about their first week on the job and what they're looking forward to most this quarter. At the Daily Northwestern, each story goes through an extensive editing process, also known as the chain.
Each article is edited by an assistant, then a desk editor, such as the audio or city editor, then a managing editor, then a copy desk and finally are editor in chief. Here's Erica explaining the difference between her current position as digital managing editor and her previous role, audio editor. I was handling more of the day-to-day things with audio, whereas now I'm overseeing audio with Mika. I'm kind of taking on more of a leadership position.
I do like both roles. I just will say that digital managing have a responsibility to make sure everything's running smoothly across more desks, so my mind is kind of scattered between different areas of the Daily, whereas last quarter, I was solely focusing on audio. She says her position has given her a renewed appreciation for the editing process at the Daily. I used to be like, oh, the chain.
You don't really need the chain, especially when I was a reporter here, but now that I'm on the managing, I've kind of realized there's a lot of things people might miss, including myself. As managing, copy checks, a lot of things that I might not be able to check. The other night, I was editing a piece as editor-in-chief because it was our editor-in-chief's content. And when I was acting at that point, I realized there was a significant thing within our data visualization, like a factor.
And so things like that, I've just noticed, like they can easily slip by. I asked Erica about her favorite moments to fly this quarter. The other day, we had this amazing data visualization by our own editor-in-chief, Alex Perry. And I really, really loved it.
It was an interactive one that related to Evanston's vacancy rates within downtown Evanston and the overall region of downtown Evanston. I thought that one was amazing because you could click play and it kind of goes through the different months. You can see the drops of when COVID hit and when those vacancy rates increase, when they decrease. I thought that was super cool.
And I really hope to see more content like that. And another thing is Mika. She just released the first digital diaries. We're on season three already, which is kind of crazy.
And it's the first episode. And it was amazing that we had a post on the Instagram. And I think that's like revolutionary for multimedia because we haven't had that much representation in the past. So I'm super excited to like already see like a post going up.
And you started digital diaries when you were an audio assistant, fall forward. So what is it like to sort of see a project you started to continue on? Yeah. Okay.
It continued. I just wanted to have like a more weekly regular podcast. And one of my goals when I went in as audio editor last quarter was to try to create more stable content each week. So we revamped certain projects.
And one of them was digital diaries, me, Mika, and another former assistant, Nita Lee, who is now our Devo editor, basically the three of us took on digital diaries every week we created it. And it was a lot of stress. But I think the outcome and the result was amazing. Is there anything you're specifically looking forward to this quarter?
One thing I will say is like with promotional content, some things are doing is we're posting audio clips and we're planning to post video clips on the Instagram as posts, which will get a lot more engagement, which I think is super, super important. We're also trying to create promotional content to get people to join our desks. What advice would you give to those who are considering going into multimedia journalism? One big piece of advice I would give, and I think a lot of other previous digital managing editors would also give, is do not be afraid to try it.
I think digital is very scary and intimidating, and that's kind of what everyone always says. But when I came in my freshman year, I was like, you know what? I'm going to just try it out. And at first I was overwhelmed.
But then the more I did it and the more I would have those conversations with my editors, the more I felt comfortable. And the more I could see growth in my content, which I think is one of the most important things is kind of growing and seeing what you can do and making that progress. People like Nika and anyone else that takes over any other digital position or runs any of these desks truly, truly cares and wants to see your product be as amazing as it can be. So you can definitely trust us within the process and we will help you through all of it.
Finally, what would you say to people who are considering joining the daily or going into journalism in general? I just want to emphasize that if you want to join and you're not a journalism major, please please join. And I think that's so wonderful to have your input on our team. And I'm super excited and I hope anyone that's interested comes out and talks to us.
I sat down with Kimberly Espinosa, the current photo editor. Why were you drawn to the position of photo editor? I think if I saw it as an artist, I think it also gives you that sense that you're being creative as well. Because for photo journalism specifically, you're obviously not supposed to alter or manipulate things.
But I think you can still get creative. For example, if you're doing like portraiture, photography, that can be a really fun experience. It's Kimberly's freshman year at Northwestern and her first edit board position at the daily. So I asked her how her experience has been so far.
I feel like I'm just getting used to everything now though because I can get around now I guess a little bit more. And I think a lot of it actually has that push of like going out more has kind of been through the daily because otherwise, I think I might have just like stayed in the Northwestern bubble. What do you like about photo journalism? There's like different ways to connect with your audience and I think one of the best places is Visual Storytelling.
There's a lot of things that when they see it, it's a lot more impactful than just like learning about it through words. I mean, even like social media, when there's like breaking news, for example on Instagram, you don't just see writing or like text, you always see a photo in conjunction to that. So I would say it's very important. What are you most looking forward to this quarter as photo editor?
I'm really excited about Dello Day. Dello Day is going to be so much fun. I was like, okay, if I become photo editor, there's a potential of like breaking more like posting with Dello Day stuff and this is also my first Dello Day. So I don't even know how that's going to be, but like just the fact that I'll be around for sure because I'm photo editor and this quarter is like super fun.
I think it should also be fun for assistants this quarter because they're also first years. I'm just ecstatic about the entire experience. And then also just like concert, like you'll be having good time listening to music, but also taking photos. So I think it's a win-win.
I'm excited for photographers to like be at Dello Day and have memories of like contributing to Dello Day festivities and whatnot. So that's what I'm most excited about. From the Daily Northwestern, I'm Mika Ellison. Thanks for listening to the first weekly episode of the quarter.
This episode was reported and produced by me. The audio editor of the Daily Northwestern is myself. The digital managing editors are Ava Mandoli and Eric Ischmitt and the editor-in-chief is Alex Perry. Make sure to subscribe to the Daily Northwestern's podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast or SoundCloud to hear next week's episode on Monday.