SANTIAGO, Chile – The woman who sits next to me waltzes into the office at about 12:30 p.m. everyday, carrying a bright orange cup of Vendomatic coffee from the machine downstairs. She checks her e-mail, raves about her life to whoever might be listening, then generally leaves work after about 2 hours in the office. Last week she stepped out early to go swimming.

Supposedly I work at the best newspaper in Chile. El Mercurio is the oldest continuously printed publication in the country, and its paper-of-record. Santiago’s two other newspapers are the aptly named El Segundo (The Second) and La Tercera (The Third).

Someone here must be working hard. But in the month that I’ve spent interning in the section “Artes y Letras,” my office seems more like a high school than a respected newspaper.

My computer directly faces the Vida Social (Social Life) section. Each week, this collection of eight or so people puts out a page of pictures and caption-length blurbs about the social goings-on in Santiago. Even with my Photoshop deficiency, I estimate that I could put this section together by myself in about 5 hours.

Instead of toiling over articles, they spend most of their time admiring each other’s manicures, looking at pictures on Facebook, pretending to be models, eating, and practicing the Chilean national sport (gossiping). I am not sure why they have a secretary, but I have seen her practicing her dance moves in front of the mirror in the bathroom on multiple occasions.

Earlier this week, someone blew a trumpet from the second floor of the newsroom.

“I thought this was a newspaper,” said the poetry reporter who sits on my other side, “not a stadium.”


Lauren D. Kiel ’11 is a Crimson news writer in Adams House. She wishes people on the floor above her would stop breaking out in Michael Jackson songs.