On the first day of every week, keeping their Monday blues at bay, writers, editors, and advisers meet and start the ever-continuing cycle of newspaper production. Behind the doors inside room L-41 is the La Voz Weekly lair, home to the production of De Anza College’s own newspaper.
The league of student journalists uphold the responsibility of keeping the students of De Anza informed about happenings in their precinct.
At 11:30 a.m. on Mondays, team members draw out their board markers, slap the stories on the table and set off the production process for De Anza’s weekly paper.
“I will attend an editorial board meeting and I will usually have a couple ideas for stories, either from flyers I’ve seen on campus or word of mouth,” said Vanessa Contreras, 24, a journalism major and spring news editor for the paper.
Cecilia Deck- the adviser to the editorial team and classroom instructor, and the team of editors meet to finalize the stories that could possibly be run in the paper for the upcoming week. The production team also includes a laboratory manager, the editor-in-chief and editors for the news, features, sports and opinions sections.
The budding student journalists in the journalism classes, JOUR 61 and JOUR 62 instructed by Deck, make up the team of staff writers who contribute to the pages of La Voz weekly.
On Tuesday the editors pitch assignments in the class and at the end of the week, ideally no later than the stroke of midnight on Sunday, stories are turned in. The editorial team meets again the next day to finalize the current stories for the upcoming week and discuss new assignments. The process in its entirety is a cycle, week after week till the end of the quarter.
“The newspaper process has no playbook; we adapt to different situations that arise,” said Michael Mannina, business manager and sports editor at La Voz.     
The team of editors starts the real process of editing and layouts on Wednesday and Thursday evenings from 6 p.m. until as late as midnight. The process is a mix of old school and new school. While editing is done manually by the editors, the layout of the paper is done on a server linking all the computers with the help of InDesign and Photoshop.
“We primarily use Adobe InDesign for the production process. It’s a really intensive process that requires a little bit of training before hand, but it’s very easy for everyone to catch on to,” said Vivian Dang Nguyen, 20, journalism major and production manager for spring.
While in progress, the pages are pinned up onto the drawing board by Sara Gobets, 25, journalism major, and current editor-in-chief. She is responsible for the look of the paper, makes adjustments and preps it for Friday.
 “We just hunker down and work through the night to ensure we get the paper out to the masses on deadline Friday,” said Mannina.
Fridays are reserved for double checking after all the layouts have been done by the page editors. When the clock strikes 2 p.m., the production is officially over and the layout is sent to the printer in San Francisco.
“We create a .pdf version of our paper to prepare it for press. Once I give the final approval, we contact the printers and send them an electronic version of La Voz,” said Gobets. The paper in its tangible form gets distributed throughout De Anza and Foothill on Monday, while the website lavoz.com is updated.
Every quarter, La Voz loses a team member or two to UCs and CSUs, but promising individuals are interviewed again to put together yet another strong core team.
Yardy Olmeta, 20, communications major, is the new features editor for fall quarter. Asked how it felt to work for a newspaper on campus, she replied, “It’s a new experience for me to work in such a fast-paced production. But it’s all about communicating with the team to produce a newspaper in such a short period of time.”
Every quarter La Voz looks forward to welcoming fresh minds who have a passion for writing and an appreciation for the power of words.
“I want to effectively attract readers with a strong design and approach to a story. Give readers the most important, factual, and interesting stories that we can find,” said Olmeta.
Involving stories that are De Anza-centric and keeping the students informed is the goal of  La Voz Weekly.
La Voz is always looking for new talent – writers, photgraphers, videographers, website pioneers and  drawers. Email [email protected] for information about Jour 61 and Jour 62 to get involved with the weekly miracle.