Hard work yields results
Today I was officially named the Lodi Living Editor. Our outgoing LL editor is the reason I'm at the Lodi News-Sentinel to begin with.
A while back, Tricia Tomiyoshi -- the current editor -- interviewed me for a QnA piece. I was supposed to be the hip young cartoonist here in Lodi. Turns out I was just jittery from too much coffee. Either way, she really enjoyed my work and suggested I might work with the paper to develop a comic strip.
Ducks in Lodi was born from the effort.
From there, I went to work formatting the online content for the newspaper on a part-time basis while working at a label company.
Soon, a copy editor position opened up at the paper and I was offered a full-time job. I left the label company and made a home at the Sentinel.
I kept doing the copy-editor gig while updating the web every night. Not long after that, I was approached with the opportunity to create graphics, maps, and other items for the print and online products instead of copy editing. I jumped on it.
During that time, I had the brilliant idea that I could draw editorial cartoons as well. I approached the publisher and editor-in-chief with the idea and they said we could give it a whirl. Sure enough, I started drawing editorial cartoons on a regular basis.
Part of creating graphics was designing the cover of our lifestyle section, Lodi Living; a section that only distributes with Saturday's paper. The more covers I designed, the better they got. I was allowed a lot of creativity, and I've been pretty happy with the results. At left is a portion of one of my favorite covers that reports on women with tattoos. I added the headline to look like a tattoo on the back of the cover model.
Last week they posted a notice that the current editor would be leaving for another position with another paper. I owe a lot to Tricia, mainly helping me get into the newspaper business which I dearly love.
I approached our EIC with the idea that I'd like to take over her duties. We talked about it, had several meetings, and today he made the official announcement that I'd be the new editor. If I could smile any broader, I don't know how I would.
