"HOW long does it take to make a newspaper?" That's what Amber Dixon, a student at Winfield Middle School, wanted to know.
She and her classmates traveled to Charleston Town Center recently to meet several staff members of the Daily Mail and Gazette.
The smart-aleck answer would be: "All the time we have."
It also would happen to be true. Putting out a daily newspaper is a never-ending job.
The press may have stopped for the day, but editors don't let up. They ask reporters: "So, what do you have for tomorrow?"
And these days, it's "can we post that now on the Web?"
It takes all of us working hard together all day to make a newspaper.
I appreciate Amber and her classmates and teachers showing interest at the "Meet the Press" event. The Winfield students had questions handwritten on index cards.
A panel of six editors fielded some of their questions at the mall that day, but I brought back the whole stack of cards. I wanted to see what else they were curious about.
"How do you know where the big news is and how do you find out? asked Barkley Castro.
"How do you get all this important stuff?" Ben Ward wanted to know.
The short answer to those very big questions is that we rely heavily on "beats."
Reporters are assigned to cover subject areas like police, courts, education, business and the Statehouse. The police reporter goes to crime or accident scenes. Other reporters cover meetings or trials. All regularly call key contacts and keep an eye on competing media.
The need to fill pages every day causes us to view the world differently.
We find ourselves interviewing people in social settings. We dig into our pockets or purses for scraps of paper to jot down ideas and tips.
I remember sitting in a barbershop with my son one day as we waited his turn. A toddler was getting his very first haircut. He was afraid, so his mother sat in the chair and held him in her lap. His two sisters climbed onto the footrests to watch.
I couldn't just enjoy the scene because I felt the pain of missed opportunity. It was a Norman Rockwell moment that would have made a great photo for the paper, but I didn't have a camera with me and I knew I couldn't get a photographer there fast enough.
Another Winfield student, Carrie Huffman, asked: "Who gets to decide what is going to be in the newspaper?"
Similarly, Keegan Patrick wanted to know: "How do you know what's front-page material?"
The Daily Mail's mission is aggressive coverage of local news. That gives us a good starting point for choosing.
"HOW long does it take to make a newspaper?" That's what Amber Dixon, a student at Winfield Middle School, wanted to know.
She and her classmates traveled to Charleston Town Center recently to meet several staff members of the Daily Mail and Gazette.
The smart-aleck answer would be: "All the time we have."
It also would happen to be true. Putting out a daily newspaper is a never-ending job.
The press may have stopped for the day, but editors don't let up. They ask reporters: "So, what do you have for tomorrow?"
And these days, it's "can we post that now on the Web?"
It takes all of us working hard together all day to make a newspaper.
I appreciate Amber and her classmates and teachers showing interest at the "Meet the Press" event. The Winfield students had questions handwritten on index cards.
A panel of six editors fielded some of their questions at the mall that day, but I brought back the whole stack of cards. I wanted to see what else they were curious about.
"How do you know where the big news is and how do you find out? asked Barkley Castro.
"How do you get all this important stuff?" Ben Ward wanted to know.
The short answer to those very big questions is that we rely heavily on "beats."
Reporters are assigned to cover subject areas like police, courts, education, business and the Statehouse. The police reporter goes to crime or accident scenes. Other reporters cover meetings or trials. All regularly call key contacts and keep an eye on competing media.
The need to fill pages every day causes us to view the world differently.
We find ourselves interviewing people in social settings. We dig into our pockets or purses for scraps of paper to jot down ideas and tips.
I remember sitting in a barbershop with my son one day as we waited his turn. A toddler was getting his very first haircut. He was afraid, so his mother sat in the chair and held him in her lap. His two sisters climbed onto the footrests to watch.
I couldn't just enjoy the scene because I felt the pain of missed opportunity. It was a Norman Rockwell moment that would have made a great photo for the paper, but I didn't have a camera with me and I knew I couldn't get a photographer there fast enough.
Another Winfield student, Carrie Huffman, asked: "Who gets to decide what is going to be in the newspaper?"
Similarly, Keegan Patrick wanted to know: "How do you know what's front-page material?"
The Daily Mail's mission is aggressive coverage of local news. That gives us a good starting point for choosing.
Several editors meet at 6:45 a.m. each day. A couple of them have spent an hour or so preparing. They have scanned the wire service offerings and our own reporting to choose the best local, national and world stories to pitch.
We pick a starting lineup for page 1. The meeting breaks up, and now everyone concentrates on making deadline. The caffeine flows. In the old days, a haze of cigarette smoke would hang over the newsroom by mid-morning.
Reporters continue to pursue breaking news, so we often make changes in the lineup until shortly before the press is to start.
Then we continue covering news for our Web site, dailymail.com, and for the next day's paper. Never-ending, for sure.
Choosing the story for the biggest, boldest headline on page 1 is easy on days when we have a significant break on a major issue. Often that's not the case, but the need for that big, bold headline keeps us hustling.
Each day we face what I call the kitchen table test.
I imagine my husband walking through our back door. The Daily Mail is lying on the kitchen table. He glances at it.
Does he walk on by?
We failed the test.
Luckily for me, he's an avid reader so he usually stops, glued to the page. But we must pass the test in lots of kitchens.
Our challenge is to make the paper interesting and vital to the lives of our readers. We also should be a force for constructive change and citizen participation in the area we cover. Show me a good daily newspaper, and I'll show you a vibrant community.
Dennis Basham's question was practical: "Have you ever misspelled a word in the newspaper?"
Have we ever. Actually, with computer software too big for its britches these days, we're more likely to have a correctly spelled but wrong word show up in the middle of a sentence. Spell check outsmarts itself, and us.
Sharp-eyed readers find mistakes and call to ask why we don't catch them. Over years of editing stories and proofing pages, I have learned the reason is focus.
Editors must evaluate many aspects of a story or entire page as they quickly move it along. They're also writing headlines and designing pages or monitoring the police scanner and fielding e-mails and phone calls. In concentrating on some mistakes, they miss others.
They get better with practice, but no one achieves perfection.
A lighter question came from Nick Hunt: "Do you deliver your own newspaper?"
As a matter of fact, I have. My son used to have the Daily Mail route in our neighborhood. Sometimes I would fill in.
A few of my neighbors found this amusing. He still got all the tips.
Friend is editor and publisher of the Daily Mail. She may be reached at 348-5124 or nan...@dailymail.com.
