Every month, a group of editors, copy editors and former copy editors here at The Eagle votes on the "Headline of the Month." Copy editor Julie Mah, with the help of her boss, copy desk chief Michael Roehrman, puts together the ballot, featuring a dozen or so of the previous month’s best headlines.
We’re voting now on the best headlines from September. And this month, I’m hoping all you blog readers will help me choose. I’ve narrowed the selection down to my favorite few:
Hungry fair visitors
stick with impaled food
(on a story about the proliferation of "on-a-stick" foods at the Kansas State Fair)
City sprawl creeps over K-96
(subhead) – A filing to rezone 55 acres beyond K-96 off Ridge Road leaves the area’s rural residents with mixed feelings.
Don’t discount
benefits of being
old and crabby
(on a news service story about a study that found that disagreeable senior citizens are smarter than average)
Man who insists on bear hugs
should be exposed as a wolf
(on a "Dear Abby" column about an over-amorous uncle)
Behind a
wheel?
Don’t
read this
(on a story about the growing local problem of distracted drivers)
(That last headline, by the way, was controversial in the newsroom. Some of us thought it was clever and inviting. Others thought it was too clever and, as a result, unhelpful to the reader. I offer that as background for your decision making.)
So, let me know which headline should win. Post your choice below. Tell me why you liked it, too. You can also send me an e-mail.
Nick
Just a reminder that the 27th Annual Wichita Area Economic Outlook Conference is Tuesday at the Hyatt Regency. This event is a highlight for the local business community and one of those must-attend events. I just wanted to give you a heads up on what to expect in terms of coverage from The Eagle and Kansas.com:
- Bill Wilson will preview the conference in Tuesday morning’s paper. Bill will report that the Center for Economic Development and Business Research is predicting a 5 percent retail sales growth for 2007. We’ll talk to business folks to see what they make of that projection.
- Dan Voorhis will cover the conference Tuesday morning. He will have reports throughout the day at Kansas.com and in Wednesday’s Eagle.
- The Eagle and Business Today (we’re one of the conference sponsors) will print a special section out of the conference. The section will contain Janet Harrah’s 2006 review and 2007 forecast. Harrah is the director of the Center for Economic Development and Business Research.
Lou Heldman, The Eagle’s publisher, will be the moderator for the conference. I also will be there. Please stop by and say hello.
Tom Shine
—–
People in the community occasionally ask me what role Eagle journalists are able to have as private citizens during election seasons. And someone last week pointed out that they saw a candidate’s bumper sticker on a car in The Eagle’s employee parking area.
The newsroom’s written ethics policy is very clear about journalists’ involvement in political campaigns. Here’s what it says:
"Don’t work on political campaigns. To prevent the appearance of a conflict of interest, do not contribute to political campaigns or sport political buttons, bumper stickers or yard signs. The same holds true for issues. If you are covering a liquor-by-the drink referendum or a school-bond issue, or an aspect of it, you should not sign petitions in favor it."
This policy pertains only to the newsroom. The Eagle’s other 300 or so employees are free to take part in the political process as they wish. The only restriction is that they cannot campaign or contribute and represent their individual views as those of The Wichita Eagle.
Sherry
I’m writing from the Associated Press Managing Editors convention in New Orleans. This is my first trip to the Gulf Coast, where Hurricane Katrina is certainly not yesterday’s news. Every day stories related to the disaster and its aftermath dominate page one of the New Orleans Times Picayune, more than a year after the hurricane. The paper’s editor, Jim Amoss, told editors here that he expects this will be the number one story at his newspaper for years to come. In fact, the paper now employs a reporter to cover mold as a full-time beat.
We are staying in the French Quarter, which didn’t suffer the same damage as other parts of the city and region. In fact, it’s home again to a lively restaurant scene, shopping, clubs. In this neighborhood, New Orleans seems to be reviving its essential tourist trade. We got another perspective on a bus tour, sponsored by the Freedom Forum, through other neighborhoods and into areas of Mississippi devastated by Katrina. It seems impossible to imagine that some of those areas will ever be restored.
I am so struck here by the dedication of the journalists who covered and continued to cover this story. On the opening day of the convention, we saw a slide show of then-and-now photos, some of which featured the ruined homes of reporters, editors and photographers from the Times Picayune. These journalists worked through the storm, blocking from their minds as best they could how the storm was impacting their own lives, their families, their homes. As wrenching as the road has been, said Jim Amoss, " we have traveled it with our readers." One photo showed the city editor handing out copies of the paper at the convention center to a crowd starved not just for food and shelter, but also for news. Today these journalists fight a constant battle on behalf of their readers for access to federal documents to show how the government is handling disaster relief.
In journalism circles, we tend to be obsessed with the survival of our industry, the prospects for recovering circulation and ad revenues, how we will build our future in an uncertain landscape. This is a moment when it is heartening to be in New Orleans, to see firsthand how vital a newspaper can be for its community.
Theresa Johnson
I’ve noted a few recent headlines that I think are clever:
Hawaii
shakes;
tourists
rattled
(by Michael Roehrman, from Page 1A on Oct. 16)
Arena parking?
City says
it has lots
(by Jill Erickson, from Page 1A on Oct. 18)
Mind your p’s and q’s
while collecting M&Ms
(by Lori O’Toole Buselt, from WichiTalk on Oct. 25)
Seen a recent headline you’d like to discuss? Post to the comments below, or e-mail me.
Nick
We published our Voter’s Guide on Thursday in the Neighbors sections in Butler and Sedgwick counties. The guide, which contains information on more than five dozen candidates in the Nov. 7 election, is a big undertaking for our newsroom.
We try very hard to be accurate but, despite our efforts, the guide contained a few errors, including a wrong photo and two incorrect e-mail addresses.
The biggest was an omission: We left out information about James Pruden, the Libertarian Party candidate for the Kansas House of Representatives, District 86. We regret that omission. His information appears in Friday’s print edition.
Another candidate called us to say he had been left out, but we determined his profile had been published in what we call a “zoned†edition. That means it appeared in newspapers that went to east Wichita, where he is seeking office. It did not appear in newspapers that went to west Wichita.
If you live in Sedgwick County, you should have been able to read bios and stances of all the candidates you can vote on.
If you would like to see Pruden’s profile — and profiles of all the candidates, east and west — check out our extensive online election guide. You’ll also find information on how and where to vote.
Marcia
For most of us, Halloween says one thing. Not ghosts, not goblins, not haunted houses. But candy.
And what better way to illustrate a story on Halloween candy than to create an image using Halloween candy?
That’s exactly what Coryanne Graham, visual editor for WichiTalk, did for today’s WichiTalk cover. As visual editor, Coryanne is responsible for art-directing photographic and illustrative ideas for WichiTalk cover stories, as well as designing the section two days a week.
She explains how she came up with today’s inventive cover:
"As we began talking about doing an all-candy WichiTalk issue, I started thinking about how I could build an all-candy cover. After a little brainstorming with other page designers, I sketched out a ghost overlooking a hillside.
"I planned from the start to build the entire image out of candy, but I didn’t choose the sweets until I got to the candy store. You’ll find assorted jelly beans, licorice laces, Nerds, M&Ms, candy pumpkins and one chocolate coin on the cover."
To which I can add only: Sweet!
Arlice
Our county reporter, Barbara Isenberg, attended Thursday’s announcement that Sedgwick County is receiving a $2 million grant from the state’s Workforce Solutions Fund for the new aviation training center at Col. James Jabara Airport. Since the center is important to our community’s future, we decided to put it on page 1. In our morning news meeting yesterday, we talked about how Gov. Kathleen Sebelius would be making the announcement during a news conference, which she did. This is one privilege of being an incumbent. However, Isenberg did not mention Sebelius in the article, so we were both unhappy to see Sebelius’ mug shot on the front page of today’s paper next to the story. One reader let us know he took issue with our use of her photo, and he was right. The photo should not have appeared.
In other election news, supporters of Attorney General Phill Kline picketed in front of The Wichita Eagle Thursday in protest of an editorial critical of Kline’s campaign. Don McKinney, a Wichita lawyer, staged a news conference. We ran a story and picture at the bottom of the local/state section. Unfortunately, the cutline under the photo referred to Don McKinney as Don Morrison. We apologize to Mr. McKinney and to all our readers for the error.
Jean Hays, metro editor
One of the most challenging and fun parts about producing WichiTalk, the Eagle’s feature section Monday through Thursday, is coming up with creative cover concepts. That’s a big part of WichiTalk editor Lori O’Toole Buselt’s job, and she gets heavily involved in the process. This week, that came at a price, as you can see in this photo of Lori and Emmett the giraffe.
Let me explain. For today’s WichiTalk cover on unusual date ideas, Lori and other WichiTalk staffers came up with a cover illustration idea that involved showing a couple at the Sedgwick County Zoo, one of our date suggestions. One concept was to show the couple holding hands with a zoo scene in the background, and that’s what ended up on the cover today. Lori and her husband, Brian, volunteered to be the "hand models" for the photographer, Mike Hutmacher, who also wanted to shoot some other concepts in case they worked better. When the Eagle staffers saw a zookeeper feeding the giraffes from a raised wooden platform, they decided to shoot Lori and Brian holding hands on the platform. That’s when Emmett the giraffe started getting in Lori’s face, literally. He couldn’t resist licking her face several times, and Hutmacher couldn’t resist snapping a few shots of the amorous creature. You can see from Lori’s expression that she felt a mixture of intrigue and revulsion. OK, mostly revulsion.
If you’re a regular reader of WichiTalk, you might be entertained by a story (and cover) we’re planning this Monday tied to the section’s first anniversary. We’ll take a look at some of the covers we’ve done in the past year, and Lori will write about the process. We think it may be awhile before she agrees to be a cover model, though.
Lori Linenberger
Features editor
Eagle Photographer Jaime Oppenheimer sent us this note today from Orlando, where she’s covering the National Business Aviation Association’s convention with reporter Molly McMillin:
"I met A.J. Anderson on the convention floor today. He’s with the U.S. Department of Commerce in Wichita. When he found out I was from The Eagle he enthusiastically pulled out a list that he ripped from Sunday’s paper. It was a list of the Kansas companies with booths at NBAA and he planned to visit all of the Wichita companies. I told him that we were using the same list to work on our story for tomorrow’s paper. It’s nice to be helpful and it’s even nicer when you get feedback."
Amen. Jaime sent along a photo of Mr. Anderson with the clipping he found so useful.
Theresa