RP: Where do we go from here?

[ritadevlin]

Date: January 10, 2010, morning
Characters: Rita Devlin,
Location: Metro Weekly offices
Status: Semi-private (staff at the Metro Weekly)
Summary: With current events in mind, Rita and her staff discuss the upcoming issue.
Completion: Incomplete

Comments

[tyler_ross]

Urgent emails were rarely good news. Tyler had been working at the Metro for six years now, and he could only remember one urgent meeting that actually turned out to be a celebration for a new advertising contract that meant the paper was safe for another fiscal term. That had been several years ago, before most of the current staff even worked here. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight, he was one of the most senior staff, and he was just a photographer. Mostly.

After reading the email and checking the time, he grabbed a steno pad and pen before heading to the conference room. When he got there, he saw that he was the first to arrive outside of their editor. Damn. Rita was a great lady, sure, but she was still The Boss, and that always made Tyler's interactions with her a bit awkward. On his part, more than anything else, but still.

"Morning, Rita," he said, taking a seat in the middle of the oval table.

[ritadevlin]

At the appointed time, Rita made her way down the hallway to the conference room. She was pleased to find Tyler Ross already at the table.

"Good morning, Tyler," she said with a smile. "How was your weekend?"

She would wait until a few more people had arrived before getting to the meat of the matter.

[tyler_ross]

"Oh, it was pretty quiet. I hit a few of the bars on Friday night to get photos for Around Town, so we should have a decent collection to choose from this week between mine, what Tegan offers for Dallas, and the others," he told her. "Was your weekend okay?"

[ritadevlin]

Rita nodded. "Good thinking. Never hurts to have a lot of photos to choose from."

"My weekend was lovely and quiet," she said with a grin. "I got to wallow in temporary non-motherhood until five o'clock yesterday."

At that moment, the door opened and another staffer joined them.

[adaarondack]

Aaron had seen the email as soon as it had hit his inbox and raised his eyebrows. It wasn't often he was called in for urgent stuff; not only were news cycles different for a small weekly paper, but he was just the web designer. It was basically his job to organize the content for the website and lay it out attractively. He wasn't a newsman or anything -- but he still knew there'd been pretty big news this weekend, and whatever the boss lady decided to do with it would eventually trickle down to him.

He poked his head in the door, finding Tyler and Rita the first ones there. Reasonably sure he wasn't late or anything, he sent a nod of greeting to Tyler and took a seat next to him, dropping his pad on the table.

"Morning, all."

[tyler_ross]

Tyler smiled when Aaron showed up for the meeting. "Morning," he said, shrugging a shoulder as if to indicate he had no idea what the meeting was about, just in case Aaron was wondering, too. "Oh, hey, by the way, do you want to do lunch on Wednesday and go over my photos for the paper this week? It'll be a working lunch, sort of."

[adaarondack]

Aaron smiled. "Sounds good to me. Work always goes down better with food. Even better when I'm not eating it at my desk."

He opened his pad to a clean page--the one clean page he had left actually.

[ritadevlin]

A few moments after she and Tyler began conversing, Aaron, the Weekly's web designer, entered the conference room.

"Good morning, Aaron," she said. "Thank you for coming. We'll wait a couple minutes for the others to arrive. I hope you had a good weekend."

[parker_will]

Will was excited; this was his first staff meeting since he'd taken the job at Metro Weekly and moved to Dallas. He hoped he wasn't late as he poked his head in the room. "Hi everyone." He shyly smiled and crossed the room, taking the open chair next to Tyler.

[tyler_ross]

"Hey," Tyler said, nodding in greeting to Will when he sat down. Will was new, so Tyler hadn't had a chance to really get to know him too well yet, but he seemed eager to work, and his writing was good. That was what mattered most around here.

[tegan_bell]

Tegan hurried in, camera gear slung over her shoulder, breathing hard.

"Sorry, sorry," she panted. "Shouldn't have tried a new 'shortcut' today." She was a freelance photographer but the Metro Weekly made up a decent amount of her steady work so she liked to try to make all the meetings. Of course, having to drive in instead of, say, walking from her cubicle did make punctuality a bit trickier.

[ritadevlin]

Everyone who was available had arrived; Cooper had gone out to Denton to investigate a possible scandal at a nursing home, and Bradenhall was on vacation, supposedly incommunicado in Bermuda. Might was well get on with the show, Rita thought.

"Now that we're all assembled," she began, looking around the room at each person in turn, "thank you for dropping whatever you were going to do when you came in this morning. I know we just had an editorial meeting last Thursday, but given the events in Tucson on Saturday, I've decided we might want to refocus our efforts somewhat this week. You are all aware of what happened?" This came out as more of a statement -- an entreaty, really -- than a question.

[adaarondack]

"Sure." Aaron sat up a little straighter and stopped tapping his pencil lightly against his pad. He stuck it behind his ear instead, frowning as he remembered what had gone down on Saturday.

"Spent a good chunk of Saturday refreshing blogs and watching press conferences."

[tegan_bell]

Tegan grunted. "I was glued to Twitter, myself." She tapped her finger against her phone in front of her. "Absolutely horrifying. When I heard about the little girl..." She trailed off, shaking her head.

"Did you know she was born on September 11th? She was in a book about babies born that day. Bookended by tragedy."

[ritadevlin]

Rita nodded as Tegan and Aaron spoke. When Tegan mentioned Christina Taylor Green, Rita had to will herself not to tear up