ALPolitics.com Celebrates National Burned-Out Editor Week

A public service announcement from Managing Editor Dr. Bill Chitwood

ALPolitics.com is proudly celebrating National Burned-Out Editor Week, a commemorative event that we have just declared into existence.

This week honors those editors of small political news sites who operate with minimal staff, less budget and coffee which should be considered its own food group.

These tireless souls spend their days sorting through press releases, checking claims and asking whether a candidate actually said that. They spend their nights learning that, yes, they did — and there’s video. Unfortunately, that video is not formatted for any platform developed after 2004, which includes theirs.

Traditional celebratory activities include eating lunch at 10:30 PM, opening the same email six times and staring at a sentence long after the words have ceased to mean anything. Other activities include reminding candidates for the umpteenth time that headshots should be included with every press release, and that standard American English is the preferred language to be used.

At a small political site, the editor may also be the reporter, photographer, headline writer and person who figures out why the website is suddenly in Portuguese, interspersed with High Assyrian. There is rarely any backup to be had when that person needs a break.

So, to honor this week, ALPolitics.com will be reducing the amount of content released for the next few days.

We apologize for the inconvenience. Or at least we would, if we had the psychic energy left to care. Which we don’t.