Over the last two days, we third year journalism students have been quite busy. We had to get the Freshers' edition of "The Informer" designed, subbed and proof-read.

With only two weeks from the start of term until getting the pages ready to go to print (offstone), this edition mostly features articles written by the new first years.

In our first week back, we had to read and sub the stories they'd written during Freshers Week - and every first year group always comes up with the same ideas. "Where to drink in Carlisle", "How to live on the cheap", "Where to get books from" and "How to find a job" are usually along them. I had to oversee two stories written about Carlisle's bookstores. They listed Waterstones, WHSmith, Bookends and Book Case, but forgot to mention the aspect of the City Library and online second-hand book shops. I had to rewrite those two stories into one publishable version, and asked the two first years to get me 2 more quotes each - they came up with two quotes in total. Ah well, when you want something done properly...

Yesterday and today, we third years spend the day in the newsroom, slaving away on QuarkXpress, working on the page layout and subbing. I had spent Monday night working on my own version of Quark on my laptop and designed my pages, only to find that I couldn't open them on the university's newer system. So I had to start from scratch, creating two pages. This edition of Informer is a 12-page tabloid, but there are only 10 third years working on it, so two of us had to do an extra page.

On page 4, I had two articles. My page lead was Carlisle's City of Culture bid, while the anchor piece was a story I'd written about a Swedish designer. I used four pictures on the page, and also used crossheads and pullquotes, to make it look interesting and break up the text every now and then. I still can't believe I got away with the headline "The City of Culture, eh?", taking Carlisle's linguistic phenomenon of "eh?" into account. Terry just laughed and although he thought that it might be considered patronising, we kept the headline.

Page 2 was a bit more difficult to lay out. The front page held a story on the library closure, and there was a page turn onto my page. Which means, the story starts on one page, but finishes on another. I also had to place the imprint, a vox pop and a Students' Union story on the page. I finally decided to put the five vox pops on a green, 2-column wide colour patch and use pullquotes to make the words stand out. The imprint stayed in its traditional place at the bottom left corner of the page, while the SU story became page lead.

We were all very busy working on our pages, sometimes to the extend of not wanting to be bothered at all. However, at the same time we tried to help each other as much as possible. Luckily, the second year students helped proof read and so on, which made it a bit easier for us. Although we're Offstone today, we won't get to see the printed version til after the weekend. That has to do with CN groups printing schedule and our slot within that schedule.

When all was done yesterday, the third year students went to the pub together. Technically, we only wanted to have a celebratory pint at the Crown Inn, our local behind the uni, after all the work was done, but we ended up staying more than 5 hours, having dinner there, and some even stayed on for the pub quiz as well. Good times. Now that's what I call journalism. After all, they say that you can pick up some of the best stories at the pub! ;)