Who says print is dead?
Judging by the phone calls and complaints I've been fielding the past few days, a lot of people still read it.
This all started Friday morning with out front-page coverage of the lockdown incident at Upper Darby High School.
If you remember, a student was taken into custody after bringing a plastic toy pellet gun onto the campus.
Luckily, there were no injuries.
But there were a lot of frayed nerves as teachers, students and staff sheltered in place during the lockdown.
A large group of parents showed up at the school demanding to get their kids.
The situation was expertly handled by Upper Darby police and school officials, who precisely followed their protocols in going room by room to ensure the safety of kids and staff.
Eventually, kids were dismissed early.
I heard from a lot of teachers who did not care for the way we handled the story on the front page of Friday's paper.
We used a picture of the school, a shot of the plastic gun that was in question, and headlined the whole thing, 'Toy Story.'
That didn't sit well with a lot of teachers.
Several of them called or emailed me.
I actually ran this past the police. They didn't seem to have a problem with it.
The teachers believed we were belittling the situation, trying to downplay it. They explained how harrowing these kinds of situations are for the school staff. They wondered why we did not focus on the efforts of the teachers, staff and police.
Actually, that was not the case, but I can see how they might interpret it that way.
What I was trying to do is what I do every day - use our front page to lure readers into the story. That's its purpose.
The Toy Story hed was not an attempt to play down what happened. Or minimize it. Or blow off what clearly was a scary time for the teachers involved.
It was an attempt to describe what happened, focusing on the fact that it was a toy gun and that, in the end, no harm came to anyone.
As the day went on, and I heard from a few more teachers and others, I was reminded of something I learned a long time ago in this business. I wish I had remembered it when I was putting together that front page.
The bottom line is that people in the news business often react to stories in an entirely different fashion than the regular public. Just ask my wife. She routinely blanches when I blithely react to even the worst imaginable story.
It goes with the business.
It's probably not right, but it's defense mechanism that you need or you usually don't last long in this racket.
There was a time in this business when we put together and printed the newspaper right in our plant. I always got the reaction of the old guys in the composing room if I was wondering about a front page or a headline. If they winced, I knew I had probably gone too far.
Sadly, those days are long gone.
We're pretty much on our own these days.
Luckily, the public still has a way of telling us if we went too far.
I'm not really in the business of offending readers, although I'm amazed at how often I manage to do just that.
Every Saturday, I write a column called Darts & Laurels in which I review the week and laud those who deserve, and zing those who have it coming as well.
This week the editor got a Dart.
I'm glad the situation at Upper Darby turned out the way it did.
Our front page? That's a different story.
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