Alignment of the Planets
I am a great believer that things happen for a reason. Sometimes, I think a mystical alignment of the planets is needed to make things work exactly right, but it happens.
I was available to do this job here with you because of an unforeseen availability.
One of the things we do here is send our pages electronically to our pressmen. It is a part of the business I have seen change in my work lifetime. Used to be, you had to manually typeset, then paste articles on pages, then take a picture of the whole page, then make a negative, then make a plate. At each step, mistakes could happen. Typos. Things placed out of order or falling off after pasteup. A light negative, a bad burn.
On the press, too much ink or too little ink. Too much water in the ink. To the delivery trucks on time. To the delivery folks on time. To your doorstep on time and not in a snowdrift or that puddle at the end of the driveway.
It all has to work in concert to make one magnificent sound of success before you even get a chance to see it for the first time.
There was a time when direct-to-negative was soooo cutting edge. Weeeeoooooo. Now all pages are done that way.
Still, when I got through the process of sending them on, sometimes the computer rejects them or the final image check looks bad and it is rejected. I always take the opportunity to see if there is a major error on the page, as if some unseen hand had stopped the process for a reason. Sometimes, there is a correctable error. Sometimes, I see a better way to present it, once I have an entire page � pics, colors, ads and all � at which to look. And that�s when I think I know why the page didn�t move the first time.
I was working at home one morning, checking the Emails and dumping the usual 60 or so spams I get when a message popped up from my favorite sister. It said �Call me immediately.� So I did. The message was listed as having been sent 17 days earlier, but it had just arrived.
Yes, she had sent it then. Yes she was mystified as to what happened. But, hey, something big had just happened in her life and so she was glad I called anyway. Unseen hand. If I had called when she sent it, I would not have called when I actually got it and the time I did call was the time she really needed a friend.
Almost every day, we start with blank pages. We have a plan of what we think is going to happen, based on regularly scheduled events. But news, by definition, is unplanned. So, every day, I start with a sense of urgency as to what we can and will present.
So far, we have not printed any blank pages. Every day, you call and give me ideas.
Sometimes, most times, folks who call or visit are almost apologetic about their having a suggestion. Many times, they are the messenger for a larger group and may not agree with the message.
We want them. We need them. Please continue to suggest.
Regional Publisher Terri Dearth�s name is on the top of this page. So is mine. We are not hard to find.
This week, we changed our EMail system The new connection was printed on the front page of the newspaper and is on this page almost every day.
It is: [email protected]
Two loyal (and one, I suspect, from out-of-town) readers went to our website last week and discovered all the �About Us� information had blipped away into cyberspace. So we entered it again. Thanks for the heads-up.
The point is, we�re listening. We may not always have the answer or the ability to write things the way you want them written, but we want to hear from you.
And, believe me, internally we beat ourselves up more than anyone else over errors.
Keep reading. Keep suggesting.
This is your newspaper.
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