I got caught in the middle of an in-house political struggle between departments on this one. C-TEXT was a proprietary software application that the Trib developed for the reporting and editorial staff. It would allow stories to be composed for print as they were written and filed, making it easier for the print staff to get out the paper faster. The graphic design staff wanted to use Adobe InDesign for this task, but they were overruled.

After months of bugs and glitches with the C-TEXT system, I was instructed to teach the Trib writing and editing staff to use Adobe InDesign and InCopy. They had a plug-in developer create a plug-in for InDesign that would do the part C-TEXT was supposed to do for them, and that did the trick. The designers got their way in the end, but only after the Trib spent a couple million dollars trying to make C-TEXT work. But that’s the cost of doing business. And I got paid crazy amounts of money for a six week job that lasted over two years. That’s the great thing about contracting. I’m not paid to get involved…I just do what I’m told.