Michael’s post below reminds me of some exquisite, pithy advice I got from a colleague, Gina Nania, about 15 years ago when I was a copy editor at The Charlotte Observer. I can’t recall what process or headline had gone astray, but Gina (not joking, I think) said, "Just pay the fine and never do it again."
Good advice, and it kind of sums up my feeling about experimenting. It’s better to try something and fail than to be dull and safe. Which reminds me of some more simple advice, this from a managing editor many years ago: "Stop boring readers to death."
– Sherry
There’s no question that e-mail has made the flow of information into our newsroom better and faster than the days of snail mail and faxes. Obviously, we live by the flow of information in the news business.
But some days I’m staggered by the amount of e-mail that rolls in. And I suspect that’s true of most people, regardless of the business they’re in.
I’m on an e-letter list for Ed and Cynthia Miller’s Newsroom Leadership Group, and recently took Ed’s advice (it’s here) about tracking e-mail content for a week or two. I broke e-mail into several categories: press releases, reader tips/complaints/compliments, internal housekeeping, etc. Some of the results were surprising.
First, my spam filter is incredibly effective (I tightened it down a few months ago). Less than 10% of the 200 or more e-mails I get most days are junk mail. About a third are press releases (not surprising), and another 15% were "news alerts" — one-sentence flashes of breaking news from wire services. But the really surprising piece: Internal house-keeping accounted for almost a quarter of all e-mail. The category of "substantive work" came up at 3%.
I’m still figuring out how to use this e-mail audit to better manage the Inbox. If anything has worked particularly well for you, please share.
– Sherry
You might have noticed something a little bit different on Page 1B, the Local & State cover, Tuesday morning: an exclamation mark in the headline “East Central, now orange-cone free!â€
Yes, it was on purpose. Although our usual inclination is to keep exclamation marks out of the paper, we thought it was a fun way to punch up the headline and we should try something different.
When looking at the page as a whole, the desk noted that the news was rather dark. The stories were about a boy with broken arms, legs and ribs and a skull fracture; soldiers vividly recalling the injuries they received in Iraq; a memorial service for murdered children; possible tax increases; etc. Our thinking was that construction on East Central being finished was on the lighter side of the news and a touch of whimsy would help balance the page.
Not everyone agreed. At our critiques of the paper Tuesday, some felt that the headline was too light and not appropriate for the story. I can see their side — basically, we tried something different and it wasn’t a total winner.
I like to look at it this way: When experimenting with new ways of doing things, success is most often preceded by failures.
With that in mind, we’ll keep experimenting.
— Michael
Just a reminder that Business Today will have a booth at Thursday’s Expoventure at Century II’s Expo Hall. I will be there most of the day and members of our business staff will be in and out throughout the day. Stop by and say hello. If you have some story ideas, share them with me and members of our staff.
Expoventure runs from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m. It’s a great business-to-business networking event put on by the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce. There will be more nearly 350 exhibitors and special events throughout the day. Click here for more information.
Hope to see you there.
Tom Shine
In Saturday’s paper, Mayor Carl Brewer wrote a letter to the editor about our report Thursday concerning how he and city manager George Kolb were bumped up to business class on a flight to Jacksonville, Fla., with a group of Wichita business and government leaders. Brewer said our story on the incident, the lead item in Carrie Rengers’ "Have You Heard?” column, represented "a lapse in basic journalistic standards.”
Some background on how we reported the story: Business reporter Jerry Siebenmark also was on the trip to Jacksonville, a city-to-city visit sponsored by Visioneering Wichita and the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce. While calling in an update for our Midday Business Report, he told us of Brewer and Kolb’s seating arrangements. He said a lot of people on the trip were talking about it. I assigned Carrie to make some calls on the situation to see what was up. Our initial question was whether taxpayers paid for the upgrades. It became apparent early that neither Brewer nor Kolb asked for the upgrades, which Carrie reported in the fourth paragraph of her column. They were given upgrades as a courtesy by an AirTran employee. That raised the question whether it was appropriate for Brewer and Kolb to accept the upgrades because the city provides a subsidy to AirTran.
It also was apparent early that a lot of people on the trip were surprised and bothered by the fact that Brewer and Kolb sat apart in business class while the rest of the traveling party — which included a who’s who of Wichita business, civic and government leaders — sat in coach. Not surprisingly, none of the people who were bothered wanted to talk on the record. But all of the people Carrie and Jerry talked with, and there were nearly a dozen, agreed that they were bothered by the incident, and they said so were others in the traveling party. That’s what we reported. Both Brewer and Kolb were given an opportunity to comment, which they did.
So, were there lapses? Not any that I can see. Did we harm the "community mission of Visioneering Wichita,” as Brewer said in his letter? We were the only media outlet in Wichita who thought the trip was important enough to cover. Jerry and I planned our coverage of the trip before he left and never strayed from the plan. That included daily coverage of the trip in The Eagle and at Kansas.com, and a 1A story wrapping up the trip that appeared in Saturday’s paper. Can Brewer argue that it was a non-story? Sure. There often is a fine line about what is and what isn’t news. I don’t think this was one of those cases, but senior editors still held several discussions about how to report and play the story. I think we got it right.
Tom Shine
One of the copy desk’s goals this year is to expand our knowledge on various topics each month.
This month we went to the Wichita/Sedgwick County Law Enforcement Firearms Training Center to learn about, well, firearms.
Talk about illuminating. In addition to broadening our knowledge of terminology and learning to ID various firearms and types of ammunition, we also got some experience in the center’s amazing new simulator.
Trust me, anyone who’s been in the simulator would never ask anything as stupid as “why didn’t the officer just shoot the gun out of the bad guy’s hand?â€
From domestic violence to armed robbery, the situations shown require split-second reactions and a high level of training. To a person we were amazed by what law enforcement faces and thankful that such great training exists.
— Michael
My workday started today at 6 a.m., hawking newspapers ’til mid-morning at 21st and Rock Road with a bunch of great people from Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Once a year, The Wichita Eagle sponsors "Taking it to the Streets", teaming up with local businesses and volunteers to sell newspapers to raise money for United Way. We had a blast out there today, and we raised more than $1,000 just at our intersection. Those Enterprise guys are fearless in traffic, I must say. And people in Wichita are so generous– one guy paid for his paper with a $50 bill and said, "Keep the change." That’s the spirit. Check tomorrow’s Eagle for more details.
Theresa
I got my invitation the other day for the 28th annual Wichita Area Economic Outlook Conference, which is scheduled for Oct. 2. There is another long list of impressive speakers, including aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia; real estate guru Stan Longhofer from Wichita State University; Tony Sementelli of Flint Hills Resources, and, of course, Janet Harrah, director for WSU’s Center for Economic Development and Business Research. Steve Martens, president of the Martens Companies, will be the conference’s moderator.
A heads up that Business Today — one the conference’s sponsor — will do a special economic package in our Sept. 27 issue in advance of the conference. We also will have extensive daily coverage out of the conference on Kansas.com and in the Oct. 3 Eagle. The Oct. 3 Eagle — with support from Koch Industries — also will include a special publication that contains Harrah’s complete local economic forecast summary. It all should make for a good week of reading.
Tom
Each month, members of the newsroom vote on their favorite headlines of the past month. Here are the winners for July (Yep, we’re a little behind).
In first place is this headline by senior journalist/designer Rod Pocowatchit.
Totes of the town
This gem was with a story about the latest tote bags for summer.
Second place was a tie.
One was by Features editor Lori Linenberger:
Lost Causes
This appeared with a story about those who are permanently, hopelessly directionally challenged.
The other second place went to deputy desk chief Lisa McLendon.
PepsiCo makes it clear:
Bottled water’s from tap
About, well, the headline tells you everything.
Third place went to Sports copy editor/online producer Josh Woods.
Venus rising
This was above a story about Venus Williams’ Wimbledon win over Maria Sharapova.
See an Eagle headline you like or think is noteworthy? Drop me a line.
— Michael
