Editor's Corner

As I wrote the headline, “Visitors in the newsroom,” I realized that some journalists would have the same visceral response as they would to the movie title, “Snakes on the Plane.”
For a profession that deals so closely with people, journalists tend to be shy about the people who read their work. Interview the president, the mayor or death row inmates? No problem. Talk to a reader? Can someone else do it?
Generally speaking, readers who reach out to the newspaper have some tidbit to contribute or something to complain about. We ignore either at our peril.
Most of our staff was present on Wednesday when 14 readers spent almost three hours as guest editors of the Sun Journal. It was in keeping with the theme of our Readers’ Choice section, which was included in Thursday’s Sun Journal.
We learn a lot when we interact with our customers. Here are some of the things I learned:
Many women could care less about sports and think that the Sun Journal devotes too much space for it.
Many women would like the Sun Journal to publish more and more useful lifestyle stories, such as recipes, local entertainment listings, gardening tips and home decorating and maintenance.
They were much more interested in our publishing letters to the editor than syndicated columnists.
They pay attention to details, such as the presence or absence of typographical errors.
I don’t have immediate answers or solutions for some of the things our guest editors requested, but I am making them a high priority.
Other things, such as letters to the editor, quality control and accuracy, have and will continue to be high priority with us.

On Oct. 28, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., the public is invited into the Sun Journal newsroom to participate in something that is unusual.

The Sun Journal’s Readers’ Choice section appears in the Oct. 29 Sun Journal, so we thought it would be a great idea (hat’s off to my wife, Sarah, who suggested it) to let our readers choose which stories go into the Oct. 29 edition.

We’ve been running ads in the paper announcing the event that say space is limited, which is true; we can’t accommodate all 30,000 Sun Journal readers or 80,000 people who visit newbernsj.com.

But we can accommodate several dozen people if need be.

Here’s how it will work:

We’ll start off with our regular weekly staff meeting, modified for the event. Normally reporters pitch their stories to editors as they come up, but for this day only, the reporters will be pitching their stories during this meeting.

It will be a good chance for you to put faces to the bylines that appear in the Sun Journal.

Alan Wooten, my assistant managing editor and editor of the Opinion page, will present an assortment of editorials, letters to the editor and columns.

Jess Huffman, sports editor, will talk about the stories he has available for his section.

We’ll also talk about the top non-local stories of the day.

Then the discussions begin — what to run, where to run it and how. It will be a good chance to learn what editors and reporters think about when choosing what stories to cover and how they will be played in the paper and online. And it will be a great chance for Sun Journal staffers to learn what our readers would like in their paper.

Then we vote: What goes on the cover, on Page 5, on the Sports cover and on the Opinion page. Readers will decide.

So when you pick up your copy of the Oct. 29 Sun Journal, you’ll be seeing what some of your fellow readers thought were the most interesting stories of the day.

Want to participate? Shoot me an e-mail at rfoster@freedomenc.com and just let me know you’re coming.

I hope to see you there.

The Sun Journal had complete coverage of New Bern’s municipal election in Wednesday’s paper, along with expanded coverage online.

It was no easy task.  I’m proud of my staff for all their hard work pulling this off.

The staff had planned for most contingencies, including what transpired, but frankly the flipping of the entire board (except Dana Outlaw, who henceforth shall be called Dana Inlaw) and a run-off for the mayor’s seat seemed unlikely and thus we were least prepared to handle it.

Our normal copy deadline is 9:30 p.m. but by trading positions on the press with our sister paper in Jacksonville, we were able to get our copy deadline pushed to 11:30 p.m.

Even then, with the flurry of coverage and the late election tally, we missed the deadline by 45 minutes. A technical glitch added another hour. By the time all was said and done, we were more than an hour late off the loading dock, which means a lot of our readers got their paper late today.

For those who got one, they got an excellent paper today — demonstrating once again the leading role in news coverage the Sun Journal plays in Craven County.

For those whose paper was late (or who never got one), I apologize.

We’ve been planning our coverage of Tuesday’s municipal elections in New Bern.

The good news is, we’re pulling out all the stops to ensure our coverage is timely, complete and comprehensive.

The bad news is, it may mean that the Wednesday print edition is late in arriving for some of our subscribers.

Our sister paper in Jacksonville has graciously allowed us to switch positions with it on the press. Normally we print the Sun Journal after our sister paper in Kinston and before the Jacksonville paper.

Switching with Jacksonville gives us another 2 1/2 hours to collect results from the election, for our reporters to report and write their stories, for photographers and videographers to do their work, for editors to go through it all, and for designers to put it together.

All that’s well and good. But then it’s time for pressmen to shoot and hang the plates and print the paper, for inserts to be inserted, for the papers to be delivered to the Sun Journal loading dock (a 40-minute drive from the printing press in Jacksonville), for delivery people to get their bundles, and for the paper to be delivered.

In other words, the news room is getting more time, but the printers and the delivery people are getting less time.

We don’t do this very often, but we believe complete election coverage is something our readers have come to expect over the decades, and we do not intend to disappoint.

It may be different a month from now, though. On Tuesday, New Bern’s is the only election. In November, everyone else has their elections, which means we won’t get extra time and, geographically speaking, we’ll have a much broader area to cover.

When the November elections come around, we’ll be asking our readers to lean on our Web site a little more. I know we at the Sun Journal will be.

I got to my desk this morning to find 13 voice mails. The first was very pleasant, inviting me to a recognition lunch for adult literacy volunteers. Sady, it was yesterday.

The rest were from readers angry that we’d left out the Sudoku and crossword puzzles from the classified ads section in Tuesday’s paper.

There are several features in the Sun Journal that are handled outside the news department. They are the Sudoku and second crossword puzzles, Celebrity Cipher, Cryptoquote, and the Dear Abby and Dr. Gott columns. All those are handled by our classified ad people.

The slipup over the missing Sudoku and crossword puzzles in Tuesday’s paper was due to human error. We published the omitted puzzles in Wednesday’s paper.

Of course, when something goes wrong with your newspaper, who you gonna call? It should not be your job to remember whether something is handled by the news room, the press room or any other room at the Sun Journal.

Sometimes who you call is obvious, like when you are an advertiser and your ad got left out. In that case, call your ad rep.

But if you don’t know who to call, feel free to call me. I may not have the answer at my fingertips, but I can find the answer fairly quickly and either answer your question or connect you with the right person.

My direct line is 252-635-5663. My e-mail address is rfoster (at) freedomenc.com.

Thanks for reading the Sun Journal.