Las Vegas Review-Journal/Dan Wheldon

I guess all I'm saying is that I don't know the entire story. And neither do you. Maybe they had technical issues, maybe it was somebody fucking up major. Not sure. But I think we all deal with people calling to complain each and every day, so when I see another journalist do it, knowing that he or she could fuck up just as royally someday, bothers me. Because we've all walked in the same shoes.

 

But this isn't "end of the night" stuff. The crash happened early evening at the latest, probably mid-afternoon in LV time. For all the focus on Web stuff being immediate and giving our readers the news as it happens, this is inexcusable. If it were a story any less important, I could understand it. But a guy freaking dying in an IndyCar race in your town? That can't get "forgotten about"

 

It was the biggest story of the day and an international story to boot. You'd think some bored editor might have clicked on the link and noticed that the story wasn't on the homepage and maybe suggested something be done before 8 hours of losing clicks had passed.

 

I'm afraid the ship sailed on that a long time ago.

Perhaps my experiences are the exception, but all the reporters I know post directly to the web.

 

Why? Reporters are the ones that generate the content. If a story isn't posted, the reporter will be the one that notices it.

 

Right, but at a paper that size does

 

I'm not saying it's not a big mistake. It's embarrassing to the paper. But nobody's life was ruined by the mistake.

And any good journalist knows that you're going to have days when you absolutely knock it out of the park. And you're going to have plenty of days when you get the job done to the best of your ability.

And then, you're going to have your bad days. You learn from them, and you try to minimize them. But you should know that they will happen from time to time, and you shouldn't let it destroy you, otherwise, you'll be so afraid to screw up, you'll never be happy.

Again, we don't know the circumstances. It could have been a technical glitch. It could have been the editor thought he took the story down, only he forgot to click on a box. Or, it could have been an editor was busy doing a bunch of other things and let it slip his mind. Or the editor is a screw-up who should be washing lettuce at McDowell's. Fact is, no one knows what happened. And unless more facts come out, I'm not going to point fingers.

 

And again, we don't know the circumstances. For all we know, the guy who was supposed to take down the story ended up having to design three extra pages because of the crash. We don't know.

 

My point is, I don't care what the circumstances are. That can't happen, and I'm not willing to give anyone there the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Do you think the readers will check the website and think, "OK, maybe the guy had to design 3 extra pages because of the crash, so they get a pass for this"? Or will they say, "What a bunch of fucking idiots they have there. Why should I waste any of my time checking out a 'news' organization that doesn't have their shit together any better than that"?

 

Baron is starting to sell me. True, it's not an end of the world thing and had Versatile not spotted it, it very well could have gone unnoticed (at least to folks in the "industry").

I guess a big part of it, to me, is that I'm very meticulous when it comes to online content and what order it appears. I'm always on my paper's site every morning making sure not just my stories are up, but all of my coworkers, as well. There have been several times when stories are simply forgotten or the most important are buried not on a side column, but under a "click for more stories" link and it drives me nuts. It might just be my minor in IT, but I think correct Web placement is very important, which could be why I see this as a bigger deal, but Baron makes good points.

 

Baron's points are all reasonable and likely contributed to the problem. But they don't excuse it. Someone asked, "Who cares if it's not the homepage?" I have the sports pages of numerous newspaper websites bookmarked. If I don't live in the area, I don't care much about the local news. But I'm a fan of three pro teams and live near none of them. I don't think this is a particularly unusual occurrence. If UNLV basketball is your thing, you certainly could keep the sports page for the LVRJ on your bookmarks list. But why would you want to have to go through the homepage every day?

And I only noticed this because when I wanted to see how the big Vegas paper covered the death, I looked for the sports page. My Google search was for "Las Vegas Review-Journal sports."

 

Isn't that like when I get all at my desk, "Where was the big feature story that involved the high school quarterback? I went through the paper yesterday and didn't see anything. What is wrong with you people?"

"Did you check Page A1?"

"No."

"You should."