Backup Centerpiece Fills Sudden Void

By Charles Crumpley
November 11, 2004 08:54 AM

If you've ever sent a kid off to school, you know the emotions: At first you're proud but wistful. Then you're panicky when you see his now-barren bedroom.

I had a miniature version of that range of emotions at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday when the managing editor asked to take one of our stories for Page 1. The story was by Stewart Yerton, who covers the burgeoning film industry for the Times-Picayune. He had written a little gem about how producers are scouting around for a New Orleans home that can double as Graceland for the filming of a TV movie called "Elvis." I was proud because it was a good story well executed by Stewart, and it deserved to be on Page 1. Kim Quillen, the assistant business editor, had done a nice job editing it.

But then I was a bit panicky when I looked at our now-barren page. Our centerpiece was gone.

We would have been truly panicky if we had no backup and if there was nothing on the wires that could work as a centerpiece. That happens often enough. Those are the adrenaline-tinged moments when you find something, anything, that'll work as a story. Then yell "Emergency!" and huddle with the designer, and maybe the design director, and anybody else who's creative and see if they can dream up something to illustrate the story.

Luckily, we had a backup. Becky Mowbray, who covers tourism, including hotels, had produced a readable account about how bellhops' jobs are not endangered, despite the advent of wheeled luggage, because the job has morphed into something akin to a walking concierge. The story was unedited but it didn't require much work. The art was in hand. The page designer, Dave Baker, would have preferred another day to arrange a second photo, but the package came together.

The managing editor helped out by tossing us a good story produced by the City Desk's environmental writer about how a harmful fungus, apparently blown in from South America by hurricane, has suddenly appeared on the state's soybean crops.

Normally we don't cover agriculture stories much, because there are few farms in our circulation territory. But we ran the story at the top of our cover, because it is the first time that the fungus has appeared in the United States and it is harmful to soybeans. Besides, the other story we had penciled in for the top, about the Fed's interest rate hike, is a national story that'll be tired by tomorrow morning. We slid that story down the page.

Rounding out our cover: An advance on a big local business symposium and a wire feature about how retailers plan to hire more workers this holiday season.

Despite the late-day loss of the centerpiece, the day worked out fine. Trouble is, we used two centerpieces in one day. And since we have two reporters working on advance stories, we can see that our inventory of centerpiece stories will be depleted in a few days.

And that could set us up for one of those truly panicky days.

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism