Breaking news story

Deadline challenge

The front-page headline at the top of today’s paper was a grabber: “State constable missing” “Lincolnville officer’s vehicle found ablaze near I-26.”

Night police reporter Nadine Parks did a tremendous job hustling that story into the paper after hearing reports on the police scanner. Her story said “about 11:45 p.m., police reported finding a Lincolnville cruiser on fire…” I’m not sure what time she nailed that, but she was clearly pushing us past the midnight deadline for last news output.

Good teamwork by our night staff resulted in an organized scramble by reporters and editors to work the phones to confirm the story, while other editors and designers reworked several pages to move an Iraq story from A-1 to an inside page.

Making deadline is crucial to getting our papers delivered on time, so editors also arranged a swap with sports, which is usually the last section out with a 12:20 deadline. Sports closed early, giving that time to news and enabling us to start the press just eight minutes late.

It would have been easy for our Newsroom to blow off the story and just put it up on Charleston.net. That they didn’t helps to explain why The Post and Courier is growing daily circulation and readership, even in this era of instant news on the Web.