Working at The Ram!

As a copy editor for Fordham's The Ram newspaper, Tuesday nights are the highlight of my week. Tuesday is The Ram's production night, which means pizza for everyone on staff! It also means close to 12 hours of non-stop editing, formatting, caffeine and inter-staff banter.

Let me rewind for a second and talk a little bit more about the basics of The Ram. It's just one of Fordham's three newspapers; the other two are the paper, a more free-style paper that publishes critical analysis and commentary, and Lincoln's Center's The Observer. The Ram is Fordham's "journal of record," publishing four sections of stories: news, sports, culture and opinions about things that are going on at Fordham as well as local and national stories that are relevant to the college audience to which we cater. It is student run: we have a student editor-in-chief, student writers, student photographers and of course, student copy editors! We put out the newspaper weekly, which is delivered, free of charge, to Fordham's Rose Hill, Lincoln Center and Westchester Campuses. The picture below is from one of our top stories this week: Alex's Trebek's visit to Fordham (taken from The Ram online)

I became involved with The Ram because, as an English major, my goals for the future include an editing job at a publishing company, and I wanted to try my hand at copy editing to see if it was actually something I would enjoy. Basically, what this job entails is dedicating a few hours to The Ram on Monday and Tuesday, during which I read through all the articles for that week's issue to check for grammatical errors. Working for The Ram is so much fun. The hours are really flexible; although the section editors and the editor-in-chief have to stay at The Ram office for the full 12 hours on Tuesday night until the paper is finished, I can drop in whenever I have a few free hours to copy edit. Also, even though I joined the staff halfway through the year, they really welcomed me with open arms. I look forward to my nights at The Ram, not only for the pizza on Tuesday night, but also for the stress relief that copy editing offers me, and the great laughs and conversations I get from my fellow staff members.

For more information, visit The Ram online or feel free to email me!