Half of my staff is out of the office, and it has nothing to do with H1N1.
As I write, almost all of the G-T’s sports staff, two of our three photographers, and some of my best reporters are in Eugene, where our coverage of the Oregon State-Oregon football game already has begun, hours before kickoff.
Cliff Kirkpatrick already is filing pregame reports (we’ll post them throughout the day on our home page), and we’re expecting dispatches this afternoon from Bennett Hall, whose assignment for the day is tracking Beaver Nation, both inside and outside Autzen Stadium. (In fact, I just received this text message from Bennett: “The eagle has landed.” I’ll take that to mean that our plan is being executed flawlessly thus far.)
Alas, some o
f us (including me) are left behind in Corvallis to keep an eye on the homefront: Raju Woodward made the rounds today of Corvallis public schools, and his reports will be posted first on the Web and will also, of course, be in tomorrow’s paper. Nancy Raskauskas will be reporting from the Corvallis scene tonight, and will be contributing stories and video of what she finds. Matt Neznanski is here as well, keeping an eye out for fresh material to post on the Web site.
For the print edition, we’ll be packaging most of our Civil War coverage in a special 10-page section that we’re producing live tonight for Friday’s paper. It should be challenging — that’s a lot of pages to be moving after 10 p.m., and I’d be lying if I said our press manager wasn’t nervous. I’m nervous too. (We’re also hoping that no other major news story breaks today in Corvallis.)
But it also should be fun.
