Sometimes journalists forget that there are some things the public doesn't know about newsroom operations, business editor Alison Boggs said.

The staff of the Cedar Post, a high school newspaper in Sandpoint, Idaho, came to visit this morning. Here are some of the questions from our visitors.

What's your absolute deadline?

For business and features, the deadlines are earlier in the afternoon.

Stories for the Idaho, city (local news), and Valley editions of the newspaper are ideally due between 5 and 6 p.m. unless it's news that happens late.

Sports deadlines are after dark because reporters have to finish after late games, and scores have to come in. This is also when Coffee, our most valuable employee, deserves a mention.

Where do story ideas come from?

Below is a drawing by the late artist/engineer Rube Goldberg, a cure for oversleeping

First, a reporter uses a Taser to zap a very large marmot that runs a Rube Goldberg machine that spits out a random string of words. The reporter takes that and writes a story.

No, actually, "beat" reporters keep track of their field of coverage and usually run across news on their own, or if stuff happens, there are breaking news or general assignment reporters who go to the scene or the event.

Sometimes story ideas come up randomly. Features/health reporter Heather Lalley called in a story idea when she was at the grocery store getting a balloon for her kid, only to find out there was a helium shortage.

What do you do with complaints?

We feed them to the marmot.

We put them inside Steve's fedora.

No, actually The S-R takes complaints very seriously.

People send complaints to a variety of people - some people phone the local news desk and some people email Steve Smith or another editor.

Photo director Larry Reisnouer said some people are surprised when editors return their phone calls, but if people have questions and leave a number, a staffer calls back.

If the complaint is about a factual error, it goes into Accuracy Watch.

Some people call because they disagree philosophically with the story, or for other reasons... in some of those cases an editor can only lend an ear.

Why is there a jar on the table?

It's our swear jar. Editor Steve Smith got this idea from the executives meeting. If anyone swears or says anything unkind, they contribute a dollar to the jar. But nobody calls others on it when Smith's not here, so it's actually just here on the table for him as its biggest contributor. It's a Steve Jar.

Kudos

• Video Journal: latest installment for the Shipp twins
• Gang sweep exaggerated - The reporter worked on this story for two weeks and made uber document requests.
• 'Awesome' teacher honored - Erin Jones won $25,000 for teacher excellence - story includes video.
• Shonto Pete trial
• Arson suspect goes free
• Tyler Perry, director
• "Concealed weapons revealed" - Dan Webster. A first-person approach worked well, said multimedia editor Nancy Malone, who also used to be 7 editor.

Note from Steve: Great paper today - everything was fantastic.

---

---