Stop the presses! Late story for Arizona Star

One of the pleasures of consulting the web site of the Organisation of News Ombudsmen is the variety of newspapers in its membership.   The reader’s advocate of the Arizona Star, columnist Debbie Kornmiller, tells on June 11 how the staff dealt  with the big national story that came trickling in, and they had to decide on changing the front page in time for the edition.   

Debbie writes:

The late guy got a workout Wednesday. Each night a different person from the news copy desk works the late shift until 12:30 a.m. to make sure that changes between editions get on the press. He or she also watches for late-breaking news.

Wednesday night as it turned into Thursday morning, Ron Solomon was the late guy. He had eight pages and the wires to check before he could go home and have dinner. Most nights are pretty routine. Late-breaking news has to be pretty significant to stop the press.

Wednesday night's news was pretty significant. A U.S. bombing raid had killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.

State edition, which goes outside Pima County, was a 20-minute run that ended at 11:45 p.m. Printing plates were changed for the final edition, distributed in Pima County and SaddleBrooke. The press started at 12:15 a.m.

A minute later the plates had aligned and papers of the quality you'd expect at home were being printed. Soon the press was cranking out 829 papers a minute.

It's a two-minute walk from the pressroom back to the newsroom to flip through the "A,'' Metro and Business sections to make sure the eight pages of changes were in the paper. By about 12:20 a.m. after checking the last page, Solomon sat down to look at the wires while he called his wife, Myra, to tell her to put the meatloaf in the oven for dinner.

As they talked, he saw that Reuters wire service was quoting ABC News as saying that al-Zarqawi had been killed.

"You better put that on the front page,'' Myra told him.

"Yes, dear,'' he said.

"Having talked to the real boss, I called George,'' Solomon said later. "George" is George E. Campbell, the copy desk director and Solomon's boss at work. It was 12:31 a.m. They discussed where to put the news, which was barely a long sentence. The teasers at the top of the page included a picture from the movie "Cars.'' That could go.

Solomon enlisted Sports designer Dylan McKinley, who was hanging late and talking to Sports' late guy, Dave Eubank.

Solomon alerted the prepress department that the front page would be remade and the press stopped. McKinley redesigned the top of the front page. At 12:37 a.m., Reuters moved another alert attributing the news to the Iraqi prime minister's TV address.

In 21 minutes, Reuters and The Associated Press sent 11 alerts, all building on Reuters' cryptic 12:16 a.m. note: KEY ZARQAWI AIDE CAPTURED IN IRAQ WITH CRUCIAL INFORMATION ON HIM — GOV'T SOURCE.

Solomon pieced together a sentence from the bulletins, called Campbell and left at 12:45 a.m. New plates were made. The press stopped at 1 a.m. and started again at 1:06 a.m.

When the run was over at 2:10 a.m., 57,390 papers — more than half of Thursday's 104,140 Stars — had been printed with the news of al-Zarqawi's death.

And the meatloaf?

"It was delicious, as always. She's a great cook,'' Solomon said.

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Protest at ‘political’ detention of  TV reporters

From the  European Federation of Journalists June 12 2006

The European Federation of Journalists, Europe’s largest journalists’ group, today condemned the action of Turkish-Cypriot police who arrested and detained for several hours three Greek Cypriot journalists of the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation who were arrested while covering a beach festival in Famagusta.
This action by the police force of the occupied northern part of the island had outraged journalists because the beach festival is normally a non-political event in which traditionally people from both communities gather together for an evening of song and dance which is far removed from the tension created by the continuing division of the island.
“This was a political act of intimidation without any justification at all,” said Arne König, European Federation of Journalists Chair. “We strongly support the protests of our colleagues in the Union of Cyprus Journalists calling for an explanation for their arrest, and we condemn what is a blatant interference in the normal work of journalists.”
Turkish-cypriot police, dressed in civilian clothes, arrested reporter Stelios Kreouzos and the cameramen Andreas Dimitriou and Christos Hasikos under the pretext that they were filming at a banned military zone and confiscated the material.
The three (and the fiance of Christos Hasikos) were held overnight in a police station and today they were brought in front of a military court. Journalists were angry that the authorities refused a demand by UNFICYP (UN force in Cyprus) to send a doctor to the prisoners, particularly concerning the health of Stelios Kreouzos, who suffers from thalassamia, a blood disorder. The journalists were finally released at 5pm, Cyprus time, after Northern Cyprus journalists’ union Basin Sen paid a guarantee of 133 Cyprus pounds.
The Union of Cyprus Journalists strongly protested over the arrest to the United Nations, which is responsible for policing the divided island. They also alerted Turkish Cypriot journalists groups and they appeared at a hearing on Monday morning to seek the release of the journalists.
Basin Sen also condemned the bomb attempts against a journalist from Africa, Ali Osman Tabak, on 24th May. Dynamite was found under his car, which shows that attack against press freedom continue whereas authorities seem not to have fulfilled their duty to find out the ‘authors’.
For more information please contact: +32 2 235 22 00
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 Travel writer Antony Brennan is at present in Hong Kong, after visiting Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, and Thailand,  and will be looking at the media. Check with him via editor@globaljreview.com