What Christmas stories is your paper running?

We don't have much today other than a story about a brand-new church celebrating its first Christmas Mass.

 

Sounds like a great piece.

Does the management at that paper still have that insight and enthusiasm, or has that desire been muted due to the economic troubles in the industry?

 

No Christmas Day paper. We ran, yesterday, the first installment of a three-part series on the L&M team that almost pulled a Milan some 25 years ago. Next two days will have the second and third parts.

 

Is the word "stories" plural?

 

No, that would be "storii."

 

My 16th annual holiday wishes column.

 

AP took one of the above stories and misread it, putting an incorrect headline on it. 24 hours later and multiple calls later, they finally corrected it.

 

That's what happens in this area at all the papers, I thought we were the only one til I was at WalMart and saw the newspaper rack.

We had 3 All-Area stories (Offensive POTY, Co-Defensive POTYs with two pages of jumps) along with weekly feature story on one player on local D1 hoops team.

Monday's paper will be the tougher one to fill, basically going to have hoops holiday tourney previews, end-of-year column and local NFL team on front.

 

I did a massive "Top Area Stories of the Decade" package for Saturday's paper - but the A section people will be having no trouble filling stuff, as the building next door to ours was gutted by a fire early this morning.

(Our building was OK - some water in the basement and a strong smoke smell, but that's it.)

 

Over the last couple of weeks we've had three stories about high schoolers getting gifts for needy children in the area. Last week we had a story on a local couple with an incredible light display, which was late in being put up this year because the couple led an effort at church to feed 32 families for the entire holiday season.

 

Next year reporters should concentrate less on needy people getting a little something and more on rich folks gorging.

 

Christmas? When was that? Do "normal" employees get the whole day off?

Not here. Five pages, planned well, so had plenty of copy (local and national) to fill it. Just another day at the salt mines.