10 Years of City Pulse

“Urrrgghhaalarrggg.” That’s the noise my brain would make inside my fat head as the City Council meeting reached hour No. 3 and one of them was - again - droning on about some inane issue ... shoveling snow or whatever. “You’ll be home by 10 p.m.,” I would tell my brain. When I got home at 11 p.m., I would inhale whatever was in the kitchen, crawl into bed and prepare for Tuesday: deadline day, the day that everything in City Pulse had to be edited, paginated, edited again and 1 million other things you do when you only have five people to produce a paper. By Wednesday, I felt like Han Solo when he was released from carbonite.

For the 2-1/2 years I was a reporter and editor at City Pulse, Mondays and Tuesdays were the toughest. Former production manager Nick Bowman used to say that putting out an issue was like giving birth. I don’t know how Berl and everyone who’s been around since the beginning has kept going for 10 years. They are superhuman. I did it each week because I knew I was helping to construct something. Seeing a new issue on the corner each week was almost embarrassing for me because each one was such an emotional investment.

One Friday night at Kelly’s in downtown Lansing, I watched a man sit at the bar with a copy of City Pulse, a hamburger and a beer and read the thing cover to cover. I’d like to think he does that every Friday night. So, I hope there’s another 10 years to come, City Pulse - or City Post, the Pulse, City Puke or whatever people call it.

And those City Council meetings are still in my blood, even after living away from Lansing for more than a year now. I still keep up on City Council affairs by reading City Pulse, of course. I’m pretty confident that Quinney and Wood will win reelection.

Neal McNamara is a former reporter for City Pulse.