Clark sat at his desk, feeling for the first time as though he actually deserved a desk of his own in the infamous Daily Planet bullpen. Infamous for him, anyway—his high school English teacher had interned a summer at the Planet and been properly impressed; his senior year had been full of stories of the bullpen, it had become a goal to someday work there, something to aim for through the tragedy that had been his life that year.
It was the afternoon after his first solo article had been published, a week into his career on the City beat. It wasn't much, a sidebar for page three, a human-interest piece. It was only special because it was his first without a shared byline with Lois Lane. According to most of the bullpen and the editor, it was something special to even secure a few inches on page three his first week.
Clark was used to the front page, though. An under-the-fold, 300 words with Lane on the dropping crime rate after the arrival of the being commonly known as Superman merely a week ago. His various articles for other papers when he was freelancing around the world. He did good work, he knew—he just had to prove it to this editor at this paper.