About that front page

I sometimes refer to it as the most valuable real estate in Delaware County.

But there is no house on it. Square feet? Forget it. This parcel is just about one square foot total.

It's not on the Main Line, although it does circulate there.

It's the front page of the newspaper.

Every day, it's one of the most important decisions I make. In fact, the second my feet hit the floor in those early a.m. hours, the tumblers in my head start thinking about what might grace that front page the next day.

Which brings me to last Friday's front page, which detailed an alleged mugging incident in Upper Darby. There was a problem with it.

When we first heard about the incident, we thought it took place outside Bywood Elementary School, where a grandmother had just dropped off her niece.

We took a photo of the exterior of the school and coupled it with a headline that focused on the incident and the school.

As we later found out, the alleged incident did not take place at the school. The woman had left the school, and gone to a local convenience store when she noticed a woman following her. She was headed back to the school when the alleged mugging took place. She eventually went back to the school to call 911.

There were several problems with that front page. The headline was insensitive, and the inclusion of it with the photo cast Bywood Elementary School in an unnecessarily bad light.

I heard from many people on Friday, including the mayor and township manager, as well as several parents who were concerned about the image of their school being tarnished.

They were right.

One thing people should know. Reporters don't design pages and they don't write headlines. Our Upper Darby correspondent Linda Reilly did not write the headline, but she took some of the grief for it.

When we found out early Friday about the circumstances involving the incident, I quickly changed the online version of the story and removed the photo of the school.

Several readers and Upper Darby residents said they thought the front page was simply an attempt to sensationalize the story to sell newspapers.

It's an accusation that is made against the newspaper all the time. There is some truth to it. We are a tabloid format. We take one story and focus on it on that front page. We are depending on single-copy sales of the newspaper, so yes, every day I am trying to sell as many papers as I can. In this instance, it was the wrong call. That was my decision, and I'll take the heat for it.

We cover a lot of stories involving Upper Darby police. Superintendent Mike Chitwood is what you might call "media friendly."

But it's incumbent on us to also detail the other stories in Upper Darby, including the many good stories coming out of the Upper Darby School District. I aim to do just that. Today's front page includes a story on a new fundraising effort the district is implementing in an effort to increase elementary school reading levels.

It's all part of what I do here each day. Unfortunately, last Friday I didn't do it very well.