A reader responded to yesterday’s posting about problems on our obituary page, asking who handles the obituaries in our paper.
The advertising department handles most of our obituaries. Most obituaries come to the paper from funeral homes, and the cost to publish an obit depends on the length of the item. Some obituaries are printed free of charge, listing just basic information in only a few lines.
The newsroom writes obituary stories of people we judge to be well-known in the community. There is, of course, no charge for these, though these often run in addition to obituaries submitted and paid for by the family of the deceased. Our news obituaries are handled like other news stories, so of course
family and friends of the deceased do not control the content of those
stories.
When newspapers began running paid obituaries many years ago, I initially was skeptical about the idea, but I quickly came to appreciate how charging customers for this service allows them to have control over what an obituary says. For many families, this is very important, and I think paid obituaries can be livelier and more personal than the obituaries newspapers tended to print years ago using a very basic, just-the-facts-ma’am format.
I may be the only editor posting on this blog that never hears from readers — but I’d be happy to have that change. Let me introduce myself, and maybe you’ll have some feedback for me that I can respond to here.
My name is Nick Jungman, and I’ve been the senior editor for nights since May. I supervise the teams of people that piece together the paper from mid-afternoon until our final deadline, typically 11:45 p.m. Those folks are mostly copy editors and page designers, but we also have at least one reporter on hand throughout the evening, in case news breaks late.
If you ever have a comment about a headline, I’d be a good person to direct that to. Many readers are surprised to learn that the reporters who write the stories aren’t (usually) the people who write the headlines. Instead, our copy editors write those headlines, based on the space allotted to them by our page designers. It’s a real art, and it’s hard to find people who can do it well. I’m happy to say we have a great team of copy editors who have that rare talent. (A favorite from recent days, by copy desk chief Michael Roehrman, is at the top of this story.) That said, I know we don’t always hit the mark. If you have a headline you’d like to discuss, mention it in a comment to this post — or e-mail me anytime.
As you can tell from the banner on Kansas.com, the launch date for Business Today is getting closer.
We are very busy here planning our first edition, which will hit the streets Sept. 7. We also are busy with the marketing campaign for our new business section, which will hit another gear on Wednesday.
Another bit of news: We are putting the finishing touches on being able to deliver our morning business updates directly to your computer’s inbox. Right now, you have to log on to Kansas.com to get our update, which we post every morning at 11:30. Pretty soon, the latest breaking business news — plus a look at what’s coming up in the next day’s paper — will be just a click away.
We’ll post details on how to sign up in the paper and at Kansas.com and eaglebusinesstoday.com.
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Some readers received papers today that contained printing glitches. At my house, the obituary page was blank and pages in classified and sports were only partially printed. Other papers were delivered with text smeared and unreadable on some pages. Several readers called me this morning to complain about this. The problem was caused because someone in the pressroom used an ink filter that was not the correct size. The problem was identified during the press run, and thousands of papers were discarded, but unfortunately, some mistakenly got onto our trucks and were sent to some of our customers.
Apparently this problem affected papers delivered in northeast and west Wichita, and I also had a call from a woman in south Wichita who was understandably very upset because her obituary page was illegible, and her daughter’s obituary was listed today. We hand-delivered a stack of good papers to her, and we’ll be publishing her daughter’s obituary again tomorrow. We’re not sure how many papers were affected, though Bill Wagenbaur, our VP for operations, estimates it was not a widespread problem. We apologize for any inconvenience. While the newsroom doesn’t handle most obituaries that run in The Eagle, we certainly appreciate how important these are to our readers.
We had several readers call us today asking for reprints of the photo of the Keeper of the Plains which ran in Saturday’s paper. I asked staff photographer Travis Heying how he managed to capture such a dramatic shot. He said he had been thinking of a lightning shot with the Keeper of the Plains statue
since the statue was elevated last winter. In the past, trees and power lines made
such a photo near impossible. When he was leaving a dinner in Old Town
Friday night, Travis says he saw lightning off to the south so he decided to drive by the
statue and have a look.
"With the storms off to the south, and the
lightning heavy, it was a perfect opportunity," Travis said. "I set up directly to the
north of the statue with my camera on a tripod. Exposures were around 6-10
seconds in length. I took around 75 photos. Only about five had lightning
strikes in them."
One caller told me today he planned to buy a copy of the photo to frame to hang in his office. It’s easy to order Wichita Eagle photo reprints on Kansas.com.
A very young reader called us this morning to leave a message protesting our removing Slylock Fox from our comics roundup. I’ll be in touch with her this afternoon (when school lets out) to chat with her about this and about our recent recent comics survey. I’m glad she’s weighing in with useful feedback for us, and it is great to know someone her age is reading the paper.
Another reader called to point out that in today’s paper, we got the age wrong for Wichita’s Sidney Toler, who played Hollywood’s Charlie Chan from 1938 to 1947. He was 72 when he died, not 59. Aaargh. I’m very happy that people alert us to these details, but unhappy to learn we’ve published a mistake in our paper. We’ll get a correction posted and in the paper on this.
One item of discussion this morning in our news meeting centered around coverage of the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which is tomorrow. I’d be interested in hearing from readers about what they would most like to read about in The Eagle on this, beyond our story yesterday on families who came to Wichita after the storm. Also, how do readers feel about anniversary coverage in general, which seems to be a staple of news coverage throughout the country?
A big part of my job lately has been recruiting editors, reporters and online producers to help us improve The Wichita Eagle in a number of ways. Right this minute, our new county beat reporter, Barbara Isenberg, is driving all the way from Philadelphia to make Wichita her home. She has worked as a reporter at the Bucks County Courier and as an intern at the Philadelphia Daily News. She’ll start with us on Monday. This is the first week on the job for Bill Wilson, our newest business reporter. We also recently hired Jerry Siebenmark as a business reporter. Both Jerry and Bill came to us from the Wichita Business Journal, and will be key to our success as we launch our new section, Business Today, on Sept. 7.
Haley Johanssen, a WSU grad, is a new fulltime copy editor here, and we hired Josh Wood as a sports copy editor and sports online producer. Also joining us recently as an online producer: Katie Lohrenz, a recent KU grad.
These are all hires we’ve made in just the last couple of months, and we still have a couple of key jobs left to fill in our newsroom. New staff members typically bring fresh ideas and approaches to our operation. Finding and retaining good talent is important in any workplace, and it is gratifying to be able to welcome Barbara, Bill, Jerry, Haley, Josh and Katie to our ranks.
Many of us here at the Eagle didn’t know whether to laugh or groan over the photo mix-up this morning in the WichiTalk section. It was pretty funny, but also maddening for people who have systems in place precisely to avoid these kinds of mistakes.
In case you haven’t seen it yet, let me explain.
A photo of Hollywood celebs Denzel Washington and Willem Dafoe was supposed to run with a short item about the DVD release on Tuesday of their movie, "Inside Man." Several editors laid eyes on the actual page "proof" that carried the item and photo, and when we released the page to be printed, it was fine. Somehow, though, technology intervened and the Denzel/Dafoe photo was replaced with a photo of two pregnant bellies. You read it right. That photo had been used on another page in WichiTalk to illustrate a new fashion product for pregnant women.
A computer mixup (don’t you love that fits-all-excuses term?) caused the belly photo to run on both pages. And it also swapped what was supposed to be a photo of a bottle of shampoo with a photo of something else. We’re not quite sure what it is. We’re trying to track down the problem and we’re optimistic it will be fixed. Until then, our apologies to our readers, and to Mr. Washington and Mr. Dafoe.
A caller wondered today how we decide which school districts to include in stories, such as the one today about suburban districts dealing with growth.
Which districts we write about can vary with the news. We include districts based on the topic of the story and on the size and proximity of a district to Wichita. We also would write about a district if a significant or interesting news event occurred there.
For education coverage in general, we focus on the Wichita school district, which had 48,451 students last year and is the largest district in a several-state region. When we write about issues facing suburban districts, we often include what we call the “ring of seven,†the seven districts that surround Wichita. Those are the districts that appeared in today’s story: Andover, Circle, Goddard, Derby, Haysville, Maize and Valley Center.
If you know of school news you think we should cover, please e-mail me. If you have news or calendar information we could include in the weekly schools page in our Neighbors section, please send it to communities@wichitaeagle.com. That page publishes information from any school district in Sedgwick or Butler county.
We probably get two to three calls per week in the Business section from readers wanting to know why a stock or mutual fund they are interested in isn’t listed on the daily stocks page.
Let me explain a little how that page comes together and how you can get a stock listed:
Our stocks and mutual funds listings are shipped to us by the Associated Press. They are listed in alphabetical order using the company’s abbreviated name, not by ticker symbol. Our listing is a combination of the NY Stock Exchange, NASDAQ and AMEX. Our mutual funds are listed separately. We also have a separate listing of about 100 stocks with ties to Kansas, which we call our Eagle 100.
The AP moves a list of the stocks with the highest volume of trade for that day. We also can request that certain stocks be included in the list. If the requested stock is not highly traded on a particular day, it might fall out of the daily listings.
We try to list the most popular mutual funds, especially those that are moderately priced.
If you want a particular stock or mutual fund listed, contact Peggy Smith, our editorial assistant, at 316-268-6501 or psmith@wichitaeagle.com. It’s helpful if you know the ticker symbol. She will forward the request to the AP. It usually shows up within the week. But when we add one stock or mutual fund, AP picks another to come off.
So it’s not a perfect system, but we will try to make it work as best we can for readers. We appreciate your patience.