Many thanks to Barbara from Severy for sending me a full week’s worth of Eagle newspapers from the 1991 Andover tornado. The reader whose mother died in that tornado will be very happy to have these. I appreciate your thoughtfulness, and I know she will, too.
The voting for the March headline contest is done. Here are the winners.
Assistant sports editor Tom Seals pulled out his slingshot and took first place.
Davidson slays Goliath
That headline ran with the story about Davidson’s win over Georgetown in the NCAA Tournament.
Second place went to senior editor Michael Roehrman.
Trails and tribulations
That one was with a story about Kansas landowners suing for compensation after the government took old railroad rights of way on their properties.
Third place was by food writer Joe Stumpe.
Raising the bar
This one accompanied a story about a Wichitan whose bar-cookie recipe is a finalist in the national Betty Crocker “Bake Life Sweeter” contest.
See an Eagle headline you like or think is noteworthy? Drop me a line.
To blog reader Gene, I didn’t mean to slight anyone by offering to email my reading list back-channel to another reader. I just didn’t think the world at large cared much about what I’m reading. Since you asked (cajoled?), I just finished “The Race Beat” by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff (a loaner from my former boss, Lou Heldman) and started “Travels with Charley” by John Steinbeck (a loaner from Deanna Harms of the Greteman Group). Next I’ll read another loaner, “The Historian” by Elizabeth Kostova, courtesy of Patty Clark of the Kansas Leadership Center.
Thanks for the tip on “Taking on the Trust” by Steve Weinberg. Coincidentally, I bought it last week. (It’s the story of reporter Ida Tarbell’s quest to bring down John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil.) But I always read borrowed books first so I can get them back to their owners in a timely fashion, so I’m not sure when I’ll get to Ida.
Back to the list: Before those, most recently I’d read Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Mayflower,” “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan, “Marie Antoinette” by Antonia Fraser, “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell, “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert, and “Ex Libris” by Anne Fadiman.
Several weeks ago I posted a note asking if any readers had saved newspapers with coverage from the Andover tornado that they would be willing to part with. A reader had written to me and explained that her mother died in the tornado, and she had saved those newspapers and read them each year on her mother’s birthday. The papers were in a box that was among things stolen in a home burglary, and she was trying to replace them — but we no longer had those papers here at The Eagle.
I’m delighted to report that several readers came through with the papers. Today the woman wrote this email to me: “I can’t tell you how happy you just made me. Thank you so much. And thanks to your readers too. You are all in my prayers….You are truly a blessing to me.”
I want to send a huge “thank you” to our readers for taking the time to find those newspapers and give them to a total stranger who needed them. Thank you, Teresa, Tabby and Audrey, and also for “backup” offers from Floyd, Pam and Bobbi. Your thoughtfulness made my day.
We’ve resolved the bugs with user sign-in for our blogs. It’s back on here. It will begin rolling out to our other blogs this afternoon and tomorrow.
UPDATE: You’ll see the sign-in links at bottom come and go as we use this blog to test our changes to the sign-in system. Thanks for your patience.
We’ve discovered a bug in the sign-in system we’re planning to deploy on all our blogs. We had been testing it on this blog, but we’ve now taken it down. We’ll keep you posted.
The voting for the February headline contest is done. It was an odd month for scoring. Out of all the headlines, six received votes and there was a tie for first place, second place and third. Here are the top four.
The first headline winning first place was written by online sports guru Josh Wood.
Nobody’s perfect
That headline perfectly summed up the Patriots’ surprising Super Bowl loss to the New York Giants.
The other headline taking first place was written by senior editor Michael Roehrman:
It’s crunch time
That one was with a story about the annual kickoff to Girl Scout Cookie deliveries in the area.
The first headline winning second place was written by deputy desk chief Lisa McLendon.
This time, it wasn’t Avon calling
That accompanied a story about a woman who residents of a local neighborhood said was soliciting herself door to door.
The other headline winning second place was written by copy editor Jennifer Comes.
States mine for growing lode of silver: Retirees
This one went with a story about the efforts of economic development groups to encourage seniors to resettle in their communities.
See an Eagle headline you like or think is noteworthy? Drop me a line.
About two months ago, we began requiring Kansas.com users to log in to post comments on our stories on the main site. While that decreased our comment traffic substantially, it also slowed to a trickle the complaints we receive about the comments, and the tone of our comment boards has improved markedly. We’re glad we did it.
Because blogs like this one are hosted on a separate platform, it has taken us a little longer to bring that same log-in requirement to the comments here. But we’ve finally figured it out. We’re testing the log-in functionality on this blog’s comments first. As the week progresses, we’ll turn on the sign-in system for our other blogs, including our most popular one, WE Blog.
The sign-in system is the same one on our main site. Most users won’t be asked to sign in, and you’ll be able to read the blogs and the comments as always. Like the main site, if you view a substantial number of pages — about 44 over four days right now — you’ll be asked to sign in as a Kansas.com member, or to register if you haven’t already. If you wish to make a comment on one of the blogs, you will have to be a Kansas.com member, and you’ll have to be signed in.
If you have any trouble, please let us know as soon as possible.
Last week a reader asked me for reading suggestions because she feels guilty about not reading more, and she heard journalists are a bookish group. She said she reads the newspaper cover to cover each day to make sure she’s up on current events, but feels intimidated about trying to become a better book reader.
I do think journalists read a lot, but probably not more than other professions in which people make their living by words. Anita, my first suggestion is not to be intimidated — there are no right or wrong choices as long as you’re reading something that interests you. The worst mistake I’ve seen would-be readers make is trying to force themselves to read something they’re not interested in because they think they should. Sort of like eating peas if you don’t like peas.
You asked if we tend to read fiction or nonfiction, and…. yes and yes. If I surveyed the newsroom, I suspect reading tastes would be all over the board. I do tend to read mostly nonfiction, primarily because there are a lot of subjects I want to know more about. Then again, my favorite book is fiction (”Watership Down” by Richard Adams).
One great thing about reading is that it can be an expensive hobby (if you like to collect books) or a free one (if you go to the library). And yes, I’ll be glad to send you a list of recent books I’ve read. But my favorites probably won’t all be yours — keep trying different genres until you find those that interest you most, and don’t force yourself to read certain books because you “should.”
A couple of readers found it suspicious that The Eagle carried a front-page story Monday about a panel of cardiologists advising against two popular cholesterol-lowering medications and recommending doctors instead rely more heavily on statin drugs. On Page 3 was a full-page ad for one of the better-known statins.
Both readers assumed we had timed the story to run in conjunction with the ad or vice versa. It may look that way, but there’s no connection between the news story selected for Page 1 and the ad that ran on Page 3. The ad was actually purchased on behalf of drug maker Pfizer by a national advertising firm that places such ads in many newspapers simultaneously. It was slated to run 8 times, and was published for the first time in The Eagle on Feb. 29.
After publication several times, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration stopped the ad and required wording changes. Those were made, and the ads resumed running Monday.
In situations like this, our news editors don’t even know such an ad is in the paper until they see it in the morning, with rare exceptions. Ads on pages with news stories are seen by editors for the first time around 11 or 11:30 p.m. But full-page ads such as the Lipitor ad that ran Monday bypass the newsroom entirely.
The bottom line is that we don’t tie news stories to advertising. In features sections we occasionally sell advertising next to related articles (fashion stories, for example), but don’t do so with news stories. One reader said it was simply too hard to believe the front-page story and the ad showed up independent of each other. But that’s exactly what happened.