Unlike the pope, I am not infallible. Just ask my wife.
I make mistakes every day. Sharp-eyed readers can catch some of them online when I am working without the safety net of others reviewing my work here in the early a.m. hours.
Of all the decisions I make here every day, easily the most important is the one I make concerning our front page. Some days I make it shortly after opening my eyes and flipping on KYW to be greeted by what has happened since falling into my near-coma-like state the night before.
Other days it doesn’t happen until later in the day.
That's the thing about this business, it's just that - news. Meaning new. Something new happens every day. Some days it seems to happen every hour, as it did yesterday.
So I, along with the rest of the world, was taken aback early yesterday when word was received that Pope Benedict XVI was resigning as leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Remember what I said about mistakes? I first sent out a text alert and tweet yesterday identifying him as Pope Benedict XIII. Not sure what I was thinking when I made that blunder. Super Bowls, maybe?
I immediately started planning that day’s coverage, with a local reaction piece with comments from Delaware County Catholics.
Actually, I already had a leader in the clubhouse. An overnight fire in Eddystone had left several families homeless. The photos were spectacular. And a strong image is sometimes as important as the lead headline on Page 1.
About an hour later we learned of gunfire in a courthouse in Wilmington, Del. A couple people were later confirmed killed in the shooting.
Later in the afternoon we were chasing two big local stories, both involving fatalities. Out in Bethel, police were investigating an apparent murder-suicide. In Nether Providence, police were trying to untangle a case in which it appeared a woman stabbed her husband to death.
I am guessing some readers might be surprised that the pope is not today’s lead story. We placed it in a skybox at the top of the page. The problem with the pope, as important as it is, is that it’s not really a Delaware County story. And that is what we do here every day, hopefully deliver news from Delaware County that readers are not going to get anywhere else. It’s for that same reason I can tell you that President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight will not be our lead story tomorrow. The shooting in Wilmington falls into the same category.
All of these stories are important, and we put them on P. 1 for that reason. But they are not our lead.
Today we used the photo of the inferno in Eddystone as our lead.
It’s not a perfect science. And one that often leaves us open to double-guessing. Be my guest. That’s part of the job. Don’t agree with our decision? Post a comment on this blog post. But if you think we should have led with the pope or the courthouse shooting, tell me why as well.
Now, it’s on to another day.
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