Early deadlne-palooza!

[mustangj17]

What do the northern papers do when there are huge storms? I feel stupid asking this since I'm from Michigan but the 4 years I spent in newsrooms, I never remember early deadlines for wintery days. Of course, we also didn't have many huge storms during that time and I was mostly a web-dude.

 

[bumpy mcgee]

My thought is people who leave at 5 p.m. and never work weekends probably shouldn't make early deadline calls without consulting those that do, especially when those decisions get made at 1 p.m. on Friday for Saturday night.

 

[printdust]

My thought is people who leave at 5 p.m. and never work weekends probably shouldn't make early deadline calls without consulting those that do, especially when those decisions get made at 1 p.m. on Friday for Saturday night.

The former ones you speak of think of the others as "less than" them anyway, so the actions taken are quite natural.

 

[I Should Coco]

My favorite early deadlines are when we get a call on the desk, at around 8:30 or so, saying our usual deadline of 11:15 is now "ASAFP" because the strapper, inserting machine or some other piece of equipment failed.

It's great to have a bajillion dollar printing press ... but of course, the same crappy post-press/bundling equipment the paper's been using since about 1970.

 

[I Should Coco]

What do the northern papers do when there are huge storms? I feel stupid asking this since I'm from Michigan but the 4 years I spent in newsrooms, I never remember early deadlines for wintery days. Of course, we also didn't have many huge storms during that time and I was mostly a web-dude.

Occasionally we will go a half-hour or hour early if there's a significant enough storm (that was true in the upper Midwest as well as here in the Pacific Northwest).

I do sympathize with our drivers, because they typically are delivering papers in the overnight hours, then going to work at a daytime gig.

And when there's snow or ice, it's like a bumper car scene around the printing facility.

 

[golfnut8924]

Curious how Snowpocalypse 2011 is going to affect Alabama papers that have writers and columnists in Arizona covering AU-Oregon.

Tonight's game won't be over until at least 11 p.m. I would suspect that papers in B'ham, Montgomery, Mobile and Huntsvegas would normally have held until at least midnight or 12:30. Huntsville's supposedly getting a foot of snow and Montgomery's reportedly covered in ice. Gonna be chaos for sure.

11? That would be a 2 1/2 hour game. I'm thinking more like midnight -- maybe even later.

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

Alabama is in the Central time zone. I suspect Pencil **** is too. Midnight or later is a better guess for viewers on the East Coast, which I suspect includes you.

 

[golfnut8924]

Alabama is in the Central time zone. I suspect Pencil **** is too. Midnight or later is a better guess for viewers on the East Coast, which I suspect includes you.

Gotcha. You'll have to excuse me, I'm one of those east-coasters who sometimes forgets that another world does indeed exist outside of the east coast 8)

 

[printdust]

The Alabama papers will all cut the deadlines two hours, have no print coverage, then ***** at week's end about why projected rack sales were through the floor.

 

[apeman33]

I'm early tonight, regardless.

1) Our paper being hyperlocal, there's no flexibility for the BCS game. It'll finish after 11. Deadline's 11. Not hard to do that math.

2) Even if I did have some flexibility, someone didn't honor my request to have a second page for Tuesday, so I would have run out of room for it anyway.

I'm already done with the stuff that happened over the weekend (We don't print Sunday or Monday) and there are no events in any sport in my area tonight, so I'm turning in my page and going home. At 6 p.m. (Hyperlocal also means no NBA, NHL or college agate to stay in for).

No one said a word about the snow. In fact, it's let up some since I got in to work.

 

[KYSportsWriter]

We're an hour early tonight for tomorrow, and tomorrow for Wednesday. Deadline is now 10:45, and our new guy is lead designer tonight.

 

[mrudi19]

Our copy deadline is 8:45 and pages are due at 9:30. It's really rough, local sports, except on Saturday's cause stuff is going on during the day, never gets in the paper and always goes online. We just have to run a photo and have the score. Luckily, we're in the mountain time zone, so we can get some of the east coast stuff in.

 

[hondo]

To top everything off Monday night, I heard the AP lead on Auburn-Oregon was late, and bad.

 

[Den1983]

We have early deadlines Christmas Eve and New year's Eve at 5 p.m., but sports can have standard deadline (11) if necessary. Our publisher is quite understanding of us needing the big games in spite of a hyperlocal paper. We don't hardly ever use the 5 p.m. deadline because surely something is going on late.

 

[User 1019]

Curious how Snowpocalypse 2011 is going to affect Alabama papers that have writers and columnists in Arizona covering AU-Oregon.

Tonight's game won't be over until at least 11 p.m. I would suspect that papers in B'ham, Montgomery, Mobile and Huntsvegas would normally have held until at least midnight or 12:30. Huntsville's supposedly getting a foot of snow and Montgomery's reportedly covered in ice. Gonna be chaos for sure.

Aw, gotta love livin in Dixie.

I sure do.

 

[HejiraHenry]

We closed at 6:00 p.m. Monday because of hazardous conditions and I watched the game from home.

Calls complaining that was didn't have a game story = zero to my department or to the editor.

We're in SEC country, but keeping our people safe was the primary objective.