Jackson's death - Absolutely 1A story?

Any newspaper which is either too fucking stupid or too fucking arrogant to put this story on A-1 should close up shop and never be allowed to publish again.

This is a no-brainer, even if you are publishing in small rural time loaded with Christian wackos, racists and homophobes.......

 

If you lived in my town, you would not get your local news without us. Nobody else covers this area. Without us, you get nothing on your local sports teams, local politics, etc. (Except for free on our web site, which is another issue entirely).

Would I like to be more ambitious, instead of just assuming that everyone will subscribe to both us and the bigger daily 120 miles to the east? Yes. But unless the entire upper management and advertising department spontaneously became competent and we could expand, that's not happening. So we have our niche and we fill it.

deskslave - you are right, I don't make these decisions. We may end up putting it on the front, it's probably 50/50, depending on how much local content we have. And that's a fair point as well about it being the degree of the story.

Our demographic is rural and old, and almost all of them subscribe to both us and the bigger regional paper (which isn't that great either, but that's another story). I'm fairly confident that the local approach is working for us. We seem to be profitable and we've avoided the layoff/furlough/pay cut bug to this point *knock on wood*.

 

I see your point. I'll not cash my paycheck this week on principle.

 

You should do that. And continue to wonder what it must be like to work at a real newspaper.

If you aren't arguing with your bosses that this should be on A-1, then you aren't very bright and just don't get it.

 

My shop's business model has it profitable and has kept my job safe thus far. I'm cool with it.

 

In Portland, PORTLAND!!!!, they've organized a 6:30 p.m. vigil and bike ride and asking participants to wear one glove.
I don't know of any performer in any medium whose premature death would be a bigger deal throughout the world. This is going to be a long weekend.
And I don't say that as a fan, I don't have any of his CDs, but as someone who has watched his career morph from pop culture icon to reality show/tabloid TV oddity.

 

I'm definitely not saying it's not a no-brainer for 99.9% of the newspapers out there. But there are exceptions to every rule, and I feel confident saying ours is one of them in this case.

 

Britney, maybe. Madonna, maybe. But even those two would only be, at most, a push, I think.

Forget performers. Go beyond any member of the Obama family and I'm not sure there are five people in America today who will evoke a bigger reaction. (Feel free to prove me wrong, though.)

Joe Biden could die tomorrow and it wouldn't evoke half the reaction this is getting.

 

There can be other things on A-1, Rick.

This has to go above the fold.

Call for local reactions, and never, ever think you do not have someone who is connected. Do you have a local Jehovah Witness chapter? Give them a call and see what they think. IIRC, he was raised a JW.

 

If you treat national stories like this, you're not a newspaper, you're something else.

 

We print local news generated by professional reporters six days a week on newsprint, supported by advertising dollars and subscriptions.

I'm guessing a lot of you never thought about working for a paper this small (then again, neither did I when I started out), but trust me, it's different down here.