Mistakes were made, but criticism of newspaper, Triad went overboard
It goes without saying that if you picked up Saturday morning’s newspaper, you realized something huge was missing from the Journal-Tribune, namely one of our three sports pages.
Due to some miscommunication between our location and the off-site printing facility, page 2B (which contained stories for the Marysville and North Union football games and the remainder of the Jonathan Alder story) was missing.
I sent the page off-site along with pages 1B and 5B, our other two sports pages.
Due to the mix-up, the weather page, which was 4B, was printed twice.
We regret the error, which was caused by miscommunication on our end and that of the printing plant.
The stories were published again in Monday’s newspaper.
The mix-up occurred after I had sent my pages and had left the office on my way home at 2:30 a.m. on Saturday. I had no idea what happened.
Managing editor Chad Williamson, who became aware of the problem after my departure, thought that he, along with production manager Nancy Clark, had the situation resolved with the plant by about 3 a.m. However, for some unknown reason on the part of the printing plant, the mix-up still occurred.
People opened their newspapers on Saturday, expecting to see those stories and they weren’t there.
Again, we apologize for the inconvenience.
What I will not apologize for is our coverage of other schools besides Marysville.
One particularly nasty e-mail that I received referred to us as “The North Lewisburg Tribune,” blasting us for covering Triad’s victory over Cedarville.
I won’t embarrass the writer of that e-mail by giving you his name.
One of the reasons I won’t embarrass him is that he insulted the North Lewisburg-Triad community with some rather cruel remarks.
I don’t want to cause him the trouble of having all of Cardinal Nation coming down hard on his head.
You are welcome, sir.
Triad is a school that we have covered for many, many years and we wanted to be there for them when they earned their first victory. Winning that game was a big deal for them and they deserved a full story. I will not apologize for that.
To my knowledge, the Journal-Tribune has never missed covering a Marysville football game with a story and photographs.
We didn’t miss the game on Friday, but the mix-up didn’t reflect that to our readers on Saturday.
As far as not printing the pageantry of Junior Football Night or the bands (as our e-mail sender blasted us for), our job at football games is to cover the game.
About the only exception is Homecoming, which is a long-standing tradition. We include a photo of those festivities along with our regular coverage.
We also now have an extra duty at football games, providing Facebook updates at the end of each quarter. That’s where our Jr. Football coverage occurred.
I am in no way proficient at that yet, but I am trying.
Some people have complained that we don’t have those updates for each game on Friday evenings.
We have four people covering football games, including one who isn’t all that great with this Facebook stuff, and there are five local schools. A simple math lesson will tell you we can’t update each game.
Assuming each writer is available each week, at best we will still often have one game we cannot cover. For games we cannot attend, we follow up with the coaches and statisticians to provide the best recap possible.
Sometimes the decision of which games to attend is easy. Sometimes, due to the distance of an away game, inclusion in the Saturday edition would be impossible anyway, as was the case Friday with North Union at Ontario. Those are the easiest decisions to make.
Sometimes it appears the game will not be competitive. Some games have more at stake — conference titles, playoff spots, etc. — than others. The decisions are often difficult, knowing we will disappoint a community because one team that deserves coverage will not get it.
We are on a tight deadline after each Friday night football game. We have a very strict timeline of 2 a.m. and it takes all we can do just to get the basic game stories and pictures on the pages and sent to the plant by that time.
Be happy that you don’t live in a community in which the newspaper has a 10:30 p.m. deadline on Friday nights.
Journal-Tribune readers get far more high school sports coverage in their Saturday newspapers than other communities get in their’s.
Our managing editor has it even more difficult. Not only does he have to write the Monarch story and download photos, but he also has to deal with other pages in the newspaper as well.
It amazes me what all we can accomplish with that clock ticking in our ears.
The mix-up with the printing plant did not allow readers to see just what all we did last Friday.
It’s the same as every Friday night-Saturday morning.
We strive to do our best to provide as complete coverage as we can for all five schools in our coverage area.
The insult that was received in that e-mail was uncalled for and quite frankly, classless.
If any readers have legitimate beefs, that’s understandable. People were upset about this problem and I get that.
My suggestion is call us and talk to us in a civil manner when there is a complaint.
We’ll work toward a solution that satisfies every party.
Insulting the newspaper or another community’s school/team is not the way to go.