Harvard has J.K. Rowling; Penn has … Emeril? That seemed like it might be the case early this morning as DP editors received an e-mail with a dubious flyer announcing celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse as the 2008 Commencement speaker.

However, even though IvyGate reported it, you won’t see a story with that news in today’s DP. When we hear about important events, we make sure the news is credible and seek confirmation before rushing to print. In this case, our sole source was an amateur-looking flyer, containing a typo and the same picture of Emeril that’s on his Wikipedia page. Not what you’d expect for a major University announcement.

Receiving the e-mail at 1 a.m., it was clear we weren’t going to reach University officials before sending the paper to print. Rather than take our chances with a late-night e-mail, we went home for the night, with plans to properly confirm today.

So check back later, because we’ll be sure to update dailypennsylvanian.com with any — confirmed — news about this year’s Commencement speaker.

To see the flyer as we received it, click here.

The first of our two recruitment meetings is tonight! If you’re interested at all in working for the DP, and trust me it’s a great opportunity, come down to our office at 4015 Walnut Streeet (right between Metropolitan Bakery and an art gallery) at 4:30 for Business and 6:00 for Editorial.

All of us have prepared short little talks for you about what each department does and what sorts of things you can do if you get involved. Also, for editorial folks you’ll be coming into the office right in the middle of production hours so you’ll get to see the office in action, as people buzz around and go about the business of putting out a daily newspaper.

Remember, this isn’t just for people interested in writing and reporting. There are so many other things involved in putting out a paper. Photo, Video, Web Design and Programming, Design, Art, Editing, Advertising, Finance, Credit, Marketing, and more.

Even if you’re not sure whether you want to work for a newspaper, please do come and check us out, you might like it like I did. When I first came to Penn I had no idea I would end up here. I wasn’t involved in my high school paper, never considered journalism, but going to a recruiting meeting sucked me in, I started writing and designing and haven’t looked back since.

Tuesday we had a meeting with Provost Ron Daniels along the same lines as the University Communications meeting, but this time the only people representing Penn were Daniels himself, and his assistant Leo Charney, who we grabbed after the meeting for a quick photo/video shoot which resulted in Wednesday’s “Personalities” piece, and the accompanying video on dailypennsylvanian.com.

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Tuesday, before our first Story Conference, a few of us Daily Pennsylvanian editors went down to Penn Police Headquarters for a “Meet and Greet” with some of the communications people for Penn along with head of Penn Police Maureen Rush. Basically, these are the people that we interview and talk to for stories nearly constantly.Besides Rush, Lori Doyle, who you always see quoted as “University spokeswoman Lori Doyle,” was there, and a few more PR people and assistants whose names rarely make it into the paper, but who DP reporters talk to a lot.Also representing the Division of Public Safety were our two main contacts there, Allina Boutilier and Jared Hupp. Phyllis Holtzmann and Jeanne Leong were there too, from University Communications, and Tony Sorrentino, our main contact for stories about retail and real estate.The meeting isn’t really that interesting, it’s more or less just a chance for all of us to see each other face to face, and talk about how to keep lines of communication open throughout the year.

The very first story conference of the year was yesterday afternoon at 5:45PM. Story conference is the planning meeting for the next issue of the paper, where the news, sports, copy, photo, design, web, managing, and executive editors meet to go over all the content that will be appearing with the next issue of the paper. It also gives us a time to discuss what we did well and what we did poorly with the previous issue.

Usually Story Conference is at 4:00PM the night before the issue comes out, but for this first issue, since it’s so large and since we have the time, we had it an extra day in advance.

At many other papers, the equivalent meeting is called a budget meeting, I believe, because the primary purpose is to go over the number of inches of room the paper has for each section. At the DP we do that, but story conference is also our daily meeting to just talk about what every editorial department is doing and keep lines of communication open.I was pretty excited to see the paper begin to come together for the first time this year, and having seen a few of the stories our reporters are writing I’m very optimistic. Hopefully you’ll enjoy this first issue as much as I am, and if you don’t please, please, let us know what you thought so that we can work on doing a better job.Today, story conference was supposed to start at 4:15 according to our new schedule. But like with all new things, there are some rough spots to work out and we’re still waiting for it. Hopefully we can get going in the next 5 to 10 minutes. 

Dear reader,

My name is David Lei and I am the incoming Executive Editor of the Daily Pennsylvanian. It is my pleasure to introduce Inside the Newsroom, our shiny new blog.

It is often said that the DP lives, both figuratively and literally (have you seen our building, 4015 Walnut?), in an ivory tower. One of our most important goals, and why we have created this blog, is to address that perception by increasing transparency. At the end of the day, we exist to inform and serve the University of Pennsylvania community. I hope our musings and thoughts here will make this clearer to you, the reader.

Cheers,
David Lei

Executive Editor-elect
The Daily Pennsylvanian