The Editor's Desk

Friday at about 11 p.m., I got a call at home from one of our night editors. Looking back after these past few days, I realize now I can’t remember if it was Kevin McGrath or Michael Roerhman calling, asking my blessing to substitute our lead story for news of a tornado that had hit in Greensburg. At 7 a.m. Saturday, online guru Nick Jungman phoned me to ask whether I thought we should hire a helicopter to get aerial photos of the scene in Greensburg. At that point, we didn’t really know the enormous scope of the damage there, and so we hesitated about spending we-didn’t-know-how-much to get photos of we-didn’t-know-what. But within minutes, we decided to go ahead. I checked my email and saw a note from assistant metro editor L. Kelly, written the night before. She had dispatched staffers to the scene immediately, and I was grateful. Because we knew we had to begin immediately providing news, photos, video of the devastation at Kansas.com.
Anyone who’s worked at a newspaper for a number of years knows the adreline surge that comes with working an important breaking story. This time around we were charting new territory in a number of ways. Most notably, the Internet has upped the pressure on newspapers to quickly provide information, answer questions people have, provide visuals and audio and graphics from the field. Not so long ago we would have reacted to news of the tornado by considering how to put together a compelling package for Sunday’s paper, how to provide news beyond what readers were able to get on television or radio. Now, we still felt that responsibility, but also had to work throughout the weekend to provide instant coverage day and night as news unfolded.
While Greensburg is 100 miles from where most of our readers live in Wichita, our aim has been to take our readers there to understand this tragedy, through photos, stories, video. Because of the Internet, we have been able to share more photographs of this event than I would estimate has ever been possible before.
Reporters, photographers, editors and designers responded to the challenge without having to be called in. The newsroom was teeming with people by midday Saturday. We ran into glitches communicating via cellphone with reporters and photographers in Greensburg, we had trouble transmitting information at certain moments. We didn’t know who had what equipment, who could film video, what access and roadblocks our staff might be encountering. Yet Nick and his crew managed to update Kansas.com to provide a constant and riveting flow of information. As the evening wore on Saturday, more of our attention turned to what would go into our printed newspaper. We huddled to strategize about how to design a front page that would let Jaime Oppenheimer’s powerful aerial photo of Greensburg’s stark, flattened vista express simply the magnitude of what had occurred. And before we went home Saturday, we talked about how to dispatch our troops on Sunday, what stories to aim for Monday’s paper. And we kept the website updated all the next day, and all the next day.
As the largest paper in Kansas, we felt a unique responsibility to tell the story of the Greensburg tornado as we knew no one else could or would tell it. The Kansas City Star ran our photos and stories on their front page on Sunday. Photos by our photographers ran in other papers all over the country. And our web traffic this week has been phenomenal.
The future of printed newspapers seems precarious at times no matter where you live. But after the week we’ve had, the importance of what we do here, the importance of our evolving newsgathering operation, seems clearer to me than ever.

Theresa Johnson, Managing Editor