Category Archives: Current Affairs

How did late Biden news get into The Eagle?

Aug. 25, 20082:15 p.m.

A couple of readers wrote that they were pleasantly surprised to see that the late-breaking news Friday night of Barack Obama’s VP pick made it into The Eagle’s Saturday print edition. One reader noted that the story wasn’t in some of the country’s largest newspapers, including The New York Times.

How did we do that? Lots of hustle from our nightside editing staff and pressroom Friday night. And it helps to be in the central time zone, with later deadlines than the East Coast papers.

Michael Roehrman, our deputy editor for production, told me in an “overnight note” that about 10 people scrambled in the newsroom when a news bulletin moved on our wire services with word that Obama had picked Joe Biden. Our Saturday paper had already gone to press, so Michael’s staff asked the pressroom team to run the press slower until we could get new pages to them. That means some early copies of the paper likely went out without the news, but I haven’t been able to verify that yet with a production manager.

It’s amazing to watch an experienced night news team in action getting breaking news in the paper. It’s a very complicated undertaking, with designers remaking pages, copy editors writing new headlines, editors pulling together stories from often-sparse available information. That gets rushed into production, new plates are made, the press is stopped, replated, and then starts rolling again with the fresh news.

I’m proud of how well our team executed this maneuver Friday night, and to reader David B., thank you for the great note to start Monday morning. I’m glad we were there for you Saturday morning.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, Politics, Reader issues | Comments Off

Magazines struggling at the newsstand

Aug. 8, 200812:28 p.m.

I’ve written here many times about the challenging environment these days in the media industry – an era when changing reader habits are creating upheaval in media use, and every media company is working to adapt.

Because we’re a newspaper, we tend to be myopically focused on newspapers when we talk about this in the newsroom. But it’s interesting to look at the impact of changing media habits elsewhere, too. Women’s Wear Daily has an interesting piece today looking at first-half newsstand sales for major magazines. It’s an interesting chart and analysis.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, News content, People, Reader issues | Comments Off

Michael’s 2 cents on the election headlines

Aug. 6, 20088:11 p.m.

Here’s a how-the-cocktail-wiener-is-made peek at the creation of the Karl Peterjohn/Tom Winters headline Sherry wrote about in her last post.

Copy editors write the headlines and then a person called the slot either signs off on them or re-writes them. Last night the copy editor working on that story wrote “Peterjohn topples Winters in county race” for the headline. “Topples” is a good verb and one we don’t use often. The problem was that it was very short, leaving an empty space that screamed “Wow, I may be interesting but I look anorexic. Can’t you fill me out?”

So the slot — that was me last night — looked for a different word.

The way I saw it, Peterjohn, who has been unsuccessful in previous runs for office, unseated an incumbent by a 14-percentage-point margin. Was the margin wider in other races? Sure. But looking at the big picture made me quite comfortable saying he overwhelmed him.

By Michael Roehrman | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, Politics, Reader issues | Comments (1)

Reader is underwhelmed by election headlines

Aug. 6, 20086:48 p.m.

John is one of my frequent emailers who takes issue with our coverage or with actions of one of the community’s governing bodies on occasion. He’s a careful news peruser and is usually correct in the points he makes. Here’s what he wrote today:

“Peterjohn garners 55% of the votes to Winters’ 41%, and the Eagle headlines this at the top of Page 1A as overwhelming. Marcey Gregory gets 60% of the vote in the #3 district commission race. That seems to be slightly more overwhelming by at least 2 percentage points. Kelly Arnold gets 58% of the vote in the race for county Clerk, and the Eagle says he won easily, and placed that opinion on Page 6A. Jim Ryun – behind by the still unsettled bid for the 2nd district congressional race was simply in trouble. In fact, by the time that edition of the paper was written, Ryun was behind. Why not just state the vote numbers and percentages and let your readers decide is a man who lost by 107 votes is merely in trouble, or factually out of the game?

Jim Slattery got 69% of the vote in the senate race. Ty Masterson got 60% in his race. Oletha Faust-Goudeau received 71% of the votes in District 29, and Carolyn McGinn got a whopping 83 in District 31, and Steve Abrams got 60% of Distric 32’s votes. Why aren’t these over-whelming numbers?”

John, I get to disagree this time! We didn’t characterize the vote margin as overwhelming. Our headline said that Peterjohn overwhelmed his opponent, using the word as a verb, not an adjective describing the vote totals.

OK, that’s splitting hairs. But a 14-percentage point win is not winning overwhelmingly? Doesn’t seem like an opinion to me, but I guess it could be if you were expecting a 30-point win and thought you squeaked one out. I’ll invite Michael Roehrman, our deputy editor/production, to share his two-cents’ worth also.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, Politics, Reader issues | Comments Off

Stories on suicide, aviation strike draw complaint

Aug. 4, 20087:59 p.m.

I had a voice mail message today from a reader upset with us for running a front-page story Sunday on Sedgwick County’s rising suicide rate while also publishing a story about an impending machinists strike at Hawker Beechcraft.

She suggests that suicides increase during an aviation strike and that it was insensitive of us to publish the suicide story during a strike.

A couple of thoughts come to mind. One is that, if there truly is a correlation between increased suicide and aviation strikes (I’m not aware that we’ve researched for such a connection), then Tim Potter’s story, which included resources for suicide prevention, would seem particularly well-timed, not poorly timed.

Additionally, though, it’s probably safe to say that the safeguards in our editing process would not typically flag such a potentially tenuous connection of two unrelated news stories. Our copy desk, which is the last line of defense against errors or inadvertently embarrassing juxtaposition, does a terrific job of looking for potential connections before words and images on a computer screen become a printed newspaper.

As a former copy editor, I’m not surprised that someone didn’t suggest a connection between the two stories. I wouldn’t have, either. (And to the caller’s question, no, I’m not new to Wichita.) Tim’s story is a weekend “enterprise” story which, for the Sunday paper, is typically written and edited ahead of the usual daily news production cycle. Longer Sunday stories are generally ready for publication by Friday if not earlier, and often the reporter and editor are not in the office on Saturday when the newspaper is being produced – in design, and on the copy desk, where headlines are written.

The Hawker strike story was “live news,” a story covered on Saturday by reporter Molly McMillin. By the time the strike vote was final and Molly’s story was written, Tim’s story already had been written and put into the production process. I explain this simply to illustrate how two news stories can end up on the same page, but take widely varying timelines to get there.

None of this is to say that I don’t believe a strike is a hardship on the striking workers, as well as a company’s non-striking employees. Sometimes, though, a reader may have a personal connection to a story and see a relationship with other news that most readers, and most editors, don’t see on first inspection.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, Newspaper ethics, Reader issues | Comments Off

Why we ran the photo containing a racial slur

July 27, 20085:54 a.m.

Some might find the photo on the front page of Sunday’s paper of a defaced Obama sign objectionable.
We debated whether to run a photo of something that we could so easily describe in words.
Tell someone that a campaign sign of a black candidate was defaced with a racial slur, and it’s not hard to imagine what the sign said or what it looked like.
On one hand, we thought that running the photo might be fanning the flames of racism. That we were insensitive to older readers who lived through some of the painful experiences of the civil rights movement. That we were helping to spread a message scrawled by a bigot that only a few people would have seen before the sign was taken down.
On the other hand, some felt strongly that we should shine a light on racism that still exists in our community and not hide it.
The article by Christina Woods states that the Obama campaign is furthering a dialogue on race.
The photo should also spark discussion.
By running the photo we are saying that this isn’t typical behavior. This is wrong.
We didn’t want it to be a dominant photograph on the front page, because we didn’t feel like the sentiment expressed dominates our reality today.
It is a vestige of an ugly past. But as Christina’s article points out, our future is much more hopeful.

By Jean Hays | Filed under Current Affairs, Newspaper ethics, Politics | Comments (3)

Are the right people giving up golf?

July 11, 200811:26 a.m.

News reports in recent months indicate that across the nation, numbers of golfers are declining as people give up the game because they lack time to play. Here’s hoping that the people who are quitting are the ones who keep spitting sunflower seed shells on the greens.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, People | Comments Off

Who doesn’t know Sebelius is a Democrat?

July 7, 20086:51 p.m.

A reader took us to task for recent story headlined, “Governor Warns of Revenue Shortfall.” In the fourth paragraph, reporter David Klepper attributes a quotation from Kathleen Sebelius this way: “said Sebelius, a Democrat.” The reader, another David, wonders why we had to refer to her party, and what implication we were trying to make – that if the governor were a Republican, there would be no revenue shortfall?

Sometimes, a Democrat is just a Democrat. The reference to the governor’s party wasn’t meant as an implication of anything other than identifying her political party. One thing to keep in mind as Sebelius’ name floats as a potential vice president candidate – stories about her are being read online across the country as people seek to learn more about her. Such seemingly minor details help readers less familiar with Kansas politics. So the party affiliation – while extraneous to some – can aid clarity for thousands of other readers.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, Newspaper ethics, People, Politics, Reader issues | Comments (6)

One new American’s thoughts on America

July 7, 20086:27 p.m.

Check out this terrific column by Adrian Pratt, publisher of the Centre Daily Times in State College, Pa. The CDT is a sister paper of ours, also owned by McClatchy. Adrian’s column about being sworn in as a U.S. citizen last week is beautifully written.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, People | Comments (2)

Discussing Colombian hostage story with a reader

July 3, 20083:48 p.m.

Sherry: I was in NY yesterday, and traveling back to Wichita. Throughout the day, there was massive TV news coverage (at least on CNN) about the release of the Colombian hostages. John McCain was involved to some degree. Certainly the story generated national attention, and parallels to the Iranian hostages were drawn. There are current hostage situations in other parts of the world, as well. I couldn’t get all the details, as I was traveling, but assumed the Eagle would have an in-depth article on the front page. I was very surprised that the article was relegated to the back page (8A) of today’s paper, with no mention of McCain’s involvement (or whether he was just grandstanding). The front page was almost all local news, including a soft article on the parks.

I am disappointed that the Eagle relegated the hostage release article to the back page, and am curious as to why. Does the Eagle think Kansans don’t care what happens on the national/international front?

**********

“Douglas, thanks for your note. I would be glad to talk about our philosophy of local vs. national/international news, and the factors that drove this story decision.

I have a very different perspective from what you describe in your email. Today, we ran full-length versions of six national or international news stories. We ran “briefs” of six others. We chose those six stories – from a menu of hundreds of national/international stories moved by our wire services yesterday – because we believed they were the most relevant and/or interesting news of the day from outside our region. We devoted more space to the Colombian hostage story than any other non-local article in today’s A-section. In my view, any story that rises to the top 1% or 2% of news stories available for the day isn’t being dismissed in its news value.

In addition, because readers often like to flip the newspaper over before turning inside, the back page of the A-section (whether it’s page 8, 12, 24 or whatever) is generally one of the most popularly read pages of the paper, after the front page. That’s where the hostage story  was published.

Newspapers across the country, regardless of size, varied widely in where they played the hostage story. Some, such as the L.A. Times and Kansas City Star, ran the story on the front page. Others, such as the Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Baltimore Sun, did not. Fewer mid-size newspapers, such as the Eagle, put the story on the front page. (You can  find front pages each day on the Newseum’s site.)

We define our primary mission as highlighting local news that our readers can’t get anywhere else. While you may dismiss the parks story as “soft,” I would urge you to drive out to one of the local lakes this weekend. There you will find thousands of people who create small cities with the mass of population camping at the waterways during the summer holidays. That will explain to you why, as of lunch hour, the parks story is the sixth most-read story on our Web site.

When I plug the Colombian hostages into Google, the top sites – of dozens that have this story today – are msnbc.com, yahoo.com, nytimes.com, npr.com, cnn.com, time.com, foxnews.com. The story is available everywhere. The story describing camping conditions at the major state parks is not.

While I’m sorry you’re disappointed in the positioning of the hostage story, I’m confident that the best service the Eagle can provide for the local community we serve is to focus our finite resources – reporting power and news space – on stories our readers can’t find anywhere else.”

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, Reader issues | Comments (1)