Right now millions of Houstonians are trying to piece their lives back together after Hurricane Ike. There are still huge piles of logs in the medians of harder-hit areas, and many traffic lights still aren’t functioning (in a town already infamous for its traffic jams).
But in some ways the worst aspect for the E&P editors was the fact that our building had no power for a week. Now power meant no access to the network, which is where we compile the articles that will be published in the magazine. We were working on our October issue, which should have been shipped to the printer Sept. 17, when we were told to go home early to prepare for the storm. Nobody thought to back all of that stuff up because nobody expected to be without power for so long.
When our office opened Monday, we were missing about half of our staff, who went to Denver for the SPE conference and were responsible for the show dailies. All week we have been trying to figure out where October articles are, what condition they’re in, how much more editing needs to be done, etc. In some cases I’ve read the same article three times (I now know way more about sand control than I ever wanted to). Our goal is to get the magazine to the printer Friday, a week and a half after it was supposed to ship.
One might be tempted under these circumstances to just give up, make October and November a double issue, post the articles on the website, etc. But we have 42,000 readers who look forward (I hope) to reading our publication every month. The editors and our generous contributors have worked hard to make sure the October issue lives up to our usual high standards.
So we’re working like dogs this week. Your October issue will be late. But it will be very, very good.
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