Some readers outside Madison were surprised that former President Gerald Ford's death didn't get more prominent placement in Wednesday's paper.
Andrea Ford wrote: "I am a subscriber to your newspaper. I am getting
quite disgusted with it however! Other papers had as their headline, the
President's death. Your newspaper had a blurb on the right hand side, to be
continued on page 9A. Your paper didn't even have the decency to call him
President. Quite disappointing!!"
Jane Rahn wrote: "The highlight of the front page of yesterday's WSJ should have been the
death of former President Gerald Ford. It doesn't make any difference that he
was "the only unelected president"--he was a former President and that should
have been the top story. It certainly shouldn't have been hockey masks!
"Way too many times your front page does not contain NEWS--it contains
fluff.
"Please don't mess up the sports section--it is top-notch.
"If there was any competition from a morning newspaper in the local area, I
can't imagine you'd come out on top. Please go back to being a NEWSpaper.
Thanks very much for your consideration."
Many readers see political bias or some other agenda behind the placement of stories in the paper, but sometimes the explanation is much simpler.
In this case, the news of Ford's death was issued by the Associated Press after the
Wisconsin State Journal already was printing for the day. We stopped printing at
once to get a short story into the paper, and a second time, early in
the morning, when AP had a full story available. That story appeared at the top
of page one, of course, but the papers with the later news were mainly delivered
in Madison and Dane County.
Sometimes it is
impossible to handle a late-breaking story with the same prominence and
comprehensiveness for all readers, so we try to do the best we can for as many
readers as possible. I'm guessing these readers must have received an earlier edition, and naturally I'm sorry they
were dissatisfied with the job we did.
Today's paper had much
more detailed coverage and, of course, there will be more as funerals are
scheduled in the days to come. You can add your comments and reactions to the forum attached to this post.
del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Yahoo!
Google
Facebook
Email
Print
