How The Tattoo operates

A fellow from one of the Houston papers once speculated we had a staff of about 30 putting together The Tattoo. But that ain't quite right.
The Tattoo is, in fact, something that Jackie Majerus and Steve Collins put out on their own with a whole lot of assistance from talented teens across the globe who write, take pictures, draw cartoons and offer encouragement.
Majerus and Collins, who work as reporters, guide the students, edit the stories, lay out the pages and put together the web site. We do it because we love it, even though it costs a mint and we can't really afford it.
The Tattoo's been around for a dozen years and it's been growing through most of them. It's exploding in size these days, with more material pouring in than it can hope to handle. That's a good problem, mostly, but it's also a little daunting.
Some days, it's too much.
But then there are times when we see something like the Hurricane Journals that Samantha Perez is writing and we think, wow, we are privileged to have this great thing that we do.
By the way, the role of The Bristol (Conn.) Press is minimal. It offers pages where The Tattoo is printed. We are happy about that, of course, because we like to see the paper in print and not just online. But The Tattoo is something distinct from the paper and is entirely owned and operated by its advisors, Majerus and Collins.
That's important because it means we can do whatever we want with the paper. And, so far at least, we must be doing something right.