Stop the presses!Tami Cupples '99
Copy Desk Chief
Major: English
Deep in the heart of Texas.
Well, not actually—more like deep in the south of Texas. Tami lives and works in McAllen, about 10 minutes from Mexico. When Tami took a Bluffton cross-cultural trip to Mexico, her plane landed in McAllen. Her first impression of the area came when she stepped off the plane into the summer heat, which felt like “a hot blow dryer blowing on my entire body.”
From feature writing to copy-editing.
After graduating, Tami moved to Harlingen, Texas, where she took a job as a features reporter for the Valley Morning Star covering the music scene. She came back to Bluffton for eight months before The Monitor called and asked her to interview for a copy editor position. She says it was a hard adjustment to make at first, from features reporter to copy editor, but she likes working as a team.
“The news changes but my routine is the same every day.”
Tami starts in the afternoon, preparing AP/Knight-Ridder “budgets” (allotted number of inches given within the total newspaper). Daily meetings at 3:30 p.m., with everyone from the top editors to layout coordinators help identify stories to publish. After that, they start putting together pages. The front section goes to press at midnight, and Tami typically proofreads between 5 and 11 p.m. “Of course,” she says, “anything can blow up . . . usually at five ’till 11!”
“Carving out a place for myself.”
Even though it’s far away, living in Texas has its strengths; Tami says the anonymity is sometimes a positive thing. “Maybe I should have gone away to college; then I might not be so far away from home now. But then again, I wouldn’t be here standing on my own two feet in a place where I started without the same connections I’d have had back home.”
Life in a border state.
With the current buzz about immigration policies, one might expect McAllen to be a hotbed of political opinions. Tami says The Monitor gets letters to the editor from “immigrants who say ‘I did it the right way. I don’t owe you anything.’” Still, she says, the sensitivity might not be as heightened as you’d think, because “this area is a great cultural mix.” Tami says that she’s been very accepted in the McAllen community. After four years of Spanish lessons from a tutor provided by The Monitor, she can say “enough to get into trouble but not enough to get out.”
Odds and ends.
A favorite treat: Frito Pie. “Take a bag of Fritos, pour in chili and cheese, and that’s dinner. It’s my favorite thing here that no one knows about or understands back home.” When she’s not hard at work (or eating Frito Pie), Tami spends time on the Internet looking for story ideas and writing a blog.
— Gina (Faccenda ‘98) Mantero
