Strip or tease
We talk a great deal more about the “news cycle” than in the past. The idea—of course—is that news is perishable and that in a world where information is being bombarded at us 360/24/7, things get stale quite quickly.
So discussions about what to put on our front page and how to present it are different than in years past. When picking stories for the front, I try to consider importance (locally and elsewhere), presentation possibilities, and its place in the news cycle. In other words an important story that has been the discussion of the cable TV stations all day may have less value as a front-page item than something that is equally important but less covered to death.
This is a rather lengthy preamble to our discussion about whether we underplayed the diagnosis of Sen. Edward Kennedy with brain cancer. We used a photo of the senator on the front page and teased to a full story inside the A section. In making that decision, I felt that this was a story that had been in the news cycle—no, it had been the news cycle—for most of the previous day and would be found by readers regardless of where we put it.
At our meeting yesterday, several editors respectfully said we should have put it on A1. National story, etc. etc. I disagreed then and still do. But as I try to do when reasonable people make reasonable arguments, I did some checking. Most regional papers did what we did. They teased to the Kennedy story inside the paper with a photo. National papers tended to make it an A1 story. The most interesting placement I saw was in the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page has often made Kennedy its personal whipping boy through the years. It was their lead story, stripped across the top with a two-deck head.
I’m interested in your thoughts on how this story ought to have been played.
Followup: On Monday, I discussed Winston-Salem’s inclusion in the geographic definition of Appalachia and asked why that is so. I’ve attached a story from 1965 that attempts to answer that question.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from 
At the News & Record, we did the same thing you did for the same reasons. Yes, 10 years ago, Kennedy would have been a big story on A1. But those days are gone. These days, the right call, I believe, is to bring something different to your readers’ table in the morning.
A front page with Kennedy splashed across the top would have told your readers “news” that was 24 hours old. What is the value of that? Why would we tell readers something that, by and large, they already know? We have to deliver value, enterprise and relevance to people or they will go elsewhere. Or, rather, if we don’t they will have yet another reason to go elsewhere.
Thnx for the backup, John. I appreciate it…
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