Just a note on process today.
We got a heads-up around 10 p.m. that President Obama was going to have a major announcement last night, scheduled for 10:30. It was quickly clear it wasn't a routine press conference, so we tore up A1, which was mostly done at that point, to make room for a story.
The press conference went off at 11:32, which is two minutes after our normal deadline to send the last page to the press. The first wire copy moved at about 11:45, but was woefully short. By midnight, we had enough to cobble together a short story for A1. Kudos to the beat reporter covering the Phillies game last night, who posted an update from the ball park. What you see on the front page of today's print edition is everything on the wire at midnight, plus two paragraphs we added from the press conference. Knowing we couldn't wait any longer, we sent the page.
Murphy's Law being what it is, that was the cue for the system to stop cooperating, which pushed our print edition back even farther. I apologize to our readers for the delays.
To keep from a 24-hour lag on the news, we called reporters in to start calling people at 7 a.m. to put together a full Vermont reaction story, from the state's congressional delegation to people on the street. Those are being posted on the website as they become available (Peter Welch fairly early, now Bernie Sanders; Patrick Leahy as soon as he puts out a statement.) We will be pulling them into an easy-to-find package, with a photo gallery, as soon as we can, as they are getting to be so numerous as to be cumbersome; plus we have added two new pages of coverage to our e-edition (pages D7 and D8 exist only in the replica edition). Those will be available here as soon as they process through the software that turns our PDF output into the searchable, clickable e-Edition ... it usually takes an hour or so.
Wow, so you're saying people who subscribe to the electronic edition of the Rutland Herald sometimes get a bonus over people who pay the straight subscription price for the daily paper? Since it costs a little extra, I like that there is added coverage.
Posted by: DribDrab | May 02, 2011 at 11:23 AM