When I went to the Town and Country in Pennsburg I had no idea what I was walking into. At Boyertown Area Senior High there is a job shadowing requirement for all juniors. I found my way to the Town and Country to see what it takes to work for a newspaper. Always having an interest in journalism, this was a perfect place to learn. Within the first few minutes, I was introduced to the friendly staff and spent the day learning about the history of the paper itself. After learning the interesting history, I soon knew that Dec. 28 would not be boring.

        First, graphic artist Candace Cameron showed me how she created and formatted advertisements for the newspaper. She also showed me how to update ads and set deadlines for customers to approve any changes. I also sat with photo journalist Bob Esposito, design and visuals editor for the paper. One of the major lessons I learned from him is that the newsroom staff needs an extensive understanding of each other's jobs to successfully publish each issue.

        Every person at a newspaper does more than one job; whether it is the classified pages and creating advertisements to doing things like taking pictures for the newspaper and writing obituaries.

        Since he also designs the layout, I had the privilege to see how Bob puts the paper together. I learned how the Town and Country does its layout compared to the other newspapers in the area. Most newspaper measure their stories by inches, while and the Town and Country uses word counts. It was only halfway through the day and I had learned so much.

        Before lunch, I sat down with the owner and editor of the paper, Larry Roeder, and talked to him about his many duties. Among them are posting obituaries to the website within an hour of receiving them and managing the legal classified advertisements.

        I learned from Wayne Suhl that advertisements pay for the paper. Each advertisement had to be correct or else the ad would be useless; thus making the advertiser angry and the newspaper to lose money.

        There are many other interesting aspects of the paper; for example, the way unsold papers are recycled. Each issue is printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink. Each week, unsold papers are collected for farmers to pick up and shred to mix with the bedding for cows. When the bedding is spent, the farmers mix the soiled paper with manure to spread on the field.

        Learning all of this definitely helped me understand the realm of journalism a little more than I did before, which gives me more options for further education in these fields. This field of work requires an extensive skill set for a successful career.