I woke up this morning &045; after about four hours of sleep &045; with ink still under my fingernails.

Despite the exhaustion, I was thrilled to have spent a night in The Democrat pressroom &045; and to live to tell about it.

I haven’t pulled an all-nighter since somewhere around finals of my senior year in college, but on Friday night &045; and Saturday morning &045; a significant portion of The Democrat staff stayed late in our pressroom to help roll newspapers.

Our Saturday edition, as I hope most of you know by now, was delivered to everyone in the Miss-Lou &045; a Christmas gift that we hope will encourage more readers of our newspaper.

That meant we printed almost twice as many newspapers as usual &045; for a Saturday newspaper at least double its usual size.

We started work at midnight, many of us after an already full day at work.

With the noise of the press ringing in our ears, we started a team assembly line of rolling and bagging or banding newspapers, joining the regular mailroom crew that works hard every night to put the finishing touches on your newspaper.

Let me just tell you: I often work six, sometimes seven days a week, late into the night, writing stories and designing pages.

But Friday night might be the hardest I’ve ever worked at a newspaper.

My back ached; I got blisters and paper cuts; around 3 a.m. I think I was even asleep on my feet.

But I wouldn’t trade our experience, and our teamwork, for anything. I am proud to work with those who gave up a night of sleep to pitch in and help our newspaper.

We got the hang of our task pretty quickly, rolling, as a team, about 4,000 newspapers the first hour, according to our calculations.

But by the time we’d been on our feet for a few hours and our hands had turned sooty from the ink, our productivity was dwindling.

And when we had rolled the last newspaper and sent the last carrier out the door, a cheer went up across the room.

Many of us saw this special edition of The Democrat through from planning to distribution, and we were proud of our results.

Essentially we did the work of two large Sunday newspapers right in a row, and we were pleased to be able to share the fruits of our labor with our readers.

But as hard as we worked to produce the issue before it reached the press, all of us gained quite an appreciation for the hard work our pressroom and mailroom crews and carriers do every night.

So if your Saturday newspaper arrived yesterday a little more scrunched than usual, I’ll take full responsibility.

But if you enjoyed reading the stories and advertisements and seeing the photos, I give credit to our hard-working staff members in our composing, classified, advertising, circulation, accounting and news departments.

But mostly I give credit to our mailroom and pressroom; they may have the hardest job of all.

They helped remind me why I love my job, this newspaper, this business &045; and this staff &045; so much.

We strive to do our best work, every day.

And the next morning, when the ink is still clinging to our fingertips, we start all over again.

Kerry Whipple

is editor of The Democrat. She can be reached at 601-445-3541 or by e-mail at kerry.whipple@ natchezdemocrat.com.