Whenever a year wraps up we are inundated with lists that subjectively measure everything. Songs, political moments, cat photos, you name it. So, I thought it would be appropriate to compile my own list of memorable moments from the Flathead Beacon newsroom, except I’m going to span its entire five-and-a-half year history.
For those of you who don’t know, the Flathead Beacon is moving. But not far. We are setting up shop in our new Kalispell location at 17 Main St. later this month, just two blocks from our current location at 217 Main St., which is at once charming and cramped.
My desk is roughly three feet from senior writer Myers Reece’s desk and even closer to photographer Lido Vizzutti’s. We are the three holdovers left in the newsroom from May 2007 when we pieced together the office furniture and moved into this building, which was formerly The Toggery shoe store. Then again, there were only four of us in the newsroom at the time, so three-quarters of us remain.
Now there are six to eight in the back office, depending on whether you include the webmaster and designer in that tally. Either way, combined with the sales staff, we’ve slowly outgrown this spot and made a lot of memories along the way. Here are just some of them.
During the early years, when we still had few employees and ample space, we also had a Nerf basketball hoop on which we would host epic games of H.O.R.S.E. and dunk contests. That lasted until someone – well, me – attempted a move clearly above my athletic ability, broke a shelf, a mirror and nearly my wrist. Thus, we were all forced into early retirement.
We also had an office monkey once. I believe it was a Capuchin, similar to Ross’ pet on that sitcom, “Friends.” A former employee owned the monkey, which wore a diaper, jumped a lot and eventually bit one of our interns. The intern received a tetanus shot. The monkey never came back to work. Now animal visitors are limited to dogs.
Each year, we produce three “Best of Preps” issues. Local high school athletes come and go throughout the day for interviews and to pose for portraits. It’s a lot of fun for us, even if it is difficult to keep track of all the teenagers. Once, reporter Dillon Tabish was confused about who had walked through the front door and asked a young woman if she “would like to change in the back” (many of the athletes change into their uniforms when they arrive at the office). Unfortunately, this young woman was at the Beacon for an entirely unrelated reason and Tabish was mortified. Fortunately, she ended up laughing about it.
Election nights are always interesting around here. We eat a lot of pizza, spend the evening on the phone reading back results and pester local officials about when the next batch of numbers might come in. This last election, every newsroom employee was at the office until 6 a.m. – a new record. You really have to like the people you work with to have slumber parties with them.
One thing employees here won’t miss is the parking game we play everyday except holidays. We have three parking spots at this office and the rest of the crew has to move their vehicles every two hours. It’s annoying for us and for the owners of businesses in front of which we park. Kalispell, however, has reaped thousands of dollars in parking tickets from us over the last several years. No longer. We have more than a dozen parking spaces at our new location, which the city may want to consider when it crafts its next budget.
We’ll miss this place – at least some of us will. But with the extra square footage at the new location, the basketball hoop is about to get a second life.