Even after more than four decades in this racket, there is still nothing that gives me more satisfaction than a knockout front page.
Yes, I know this will come as a surprise to many readers, including those who view this blog online, but we still print a newspaper every day.
It remains, at least for me, one of life's great treats, 24 hours delivered in a neat, compact package.
There is something different about holding a newspaper in your hands. It's tactile, the feel of the newsprint in your fingers, turning the pages, each one revealing another little nugget of that day's news.
Yes, I still delight at seeing the ink on my fingertips - and too often on the cuffs of my shirtsleeves. It is one of the reasons the first thing I do when I get into the office most days is roll up my sleeves.
Yes, it's time to get to work creating the next day's print edition.
The newspaper has something that online news will never have.
It has character, it's personal, it speaks to me.
OK, so I'm old.
An essential element in the importance of our print edition every day is the front page. I've said many times over the years that of all the decisions I make every day, one stands out. It's what will be on our front page, what will be our lead headline and image that dominates that less that one square foot visage that remains one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in Delaware County.
I have been accused many times over the years of designing that front page merely to sensationalize a story and sell newspapers. There is some truth to that charge.
That is the essence of that front page's job. It is meant to stop people in their tracks, reach out from that box or stack in the Wawa, grab you by the throat and scream, "Buy this newspaper."
I used to consider myself something of a page designer.
Then I met Mark Locher.
I'll make this simple. Over the past two decades the front page of the Daily Times has looked the way it does because of Mark Locher.
Mark wasn't just a graphic artist, or a page designer. He was an artist. I could look at a page and instantly see that it had that special Mark Locher touch.
Mark joined the Daily Times in 1997, brought on by my predecessor, Steve Lambert.
At the time, I was the associate editor, running the news desk. One of my tasks was creating the front page of the newspaper every day.
I can admit I was a little put off when Mark joined our staff. After all, I had been doing front pages for about a decade at that point.
Then I saw his work.
It's unusual to say this about something that appears in a newspaper, but Mark's pages were actually "pretty."
Whether a front page, one of our weekend packages on Pages 4-5, or the dozens of special sections he created, every page had that special Mark Locher touch.
Every day Mark would join our first news meeting of the day at 10 a.m. I would try to give him a feel for what I was thinking about for the next day's lead. Eventually I would supply him with the words, headlines and images I wanted. Then Mark would do the rest.
When he was finished, I would routinely smile.
In addition to being a first-class page designer, Mark also was a talented artist and musician.
And, of course, something else. Mark was a lifelong, die-hard Philadelphia Eagles fan. We talked about the Eagles almost every day. Monday mornings were reserved for reliving the games, which he traditionally watched with his dad.
I still find it hard to believe that Mark made the trek every day from his home near Allentown, down the Blue Route to our office in Primos. It had to take him the better part of an hour and a half, and that's when there wasn't bad traffic on the Blue Route. Is there ever a time when there isn't bad traffic on the Blue Route?
When our company moved all of our page designers to a corporate production Hub to be located at the Times Herald in Norristown, most of us were crestfallen. I joked with Mark that they just knocked 40 minutes off his commute.
I still emailed Mark just about every day, letting him know what I wanted on the front page.
He would email me back when it was finished. Inevitably I would look at the page on the screen and smile. Mark Locher had done it again.
We lost Mark Locher last week way too soon.
Suffice it to say I lost a friend and a co-worker.
You may not realize it, but if you read the Daily Times, you lost a friend as well.
The paper will never have that special Mark Locher touch again.
I think we will all miss him terribly.
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