Fish tale

“Nobody else in the world has a picture of Sandra Day O’Connor in waders on the front page.”
— Steve Smith, editor

Lots of praise for Rich Landers’ column today on his fishing trip with the retiring Supreme Court justice. Opportunities to get this informal with a high court justice are exceptionally rare - the justices are notoriously private, choosing to maintain a degree of anonymity to avoid public influence. Landers’ photo (shot with a digital camera, another rare event for a guy who prefers to shoot on slide film) is making the rounds - we’ve received inquiries from NBC and Time, among others.

Some were concerned that the headline “O’Connor picks wade over row” stole the thunder from a beautifully executed pun by Landers. It was a difficult headline to write in the space provided, and while headline writers go out of their way to avoid borrowing from columnists, there wasn’t much choice in the matter here. Opinions were mixed as to whether the headline diminished the impact of the writing, but most editors felt it did a good job of drawing readers into the story.

It’s all in the timing

Today’s story on the Hayden standoff says the situation was unresolved, but of course, before most papers were even loaded onto delivery trucks, the standoff had ended . The print story does give the time that we had to cut bait - 10 p.m. - but Smith felt this element needed to be higher up in the story to make clear that things may have changed after press time.

Coming up

Lots of people in Washington have college degrees, but many of them didn’t get them here - we’ll look at dynamics of importing graduates to fill workplace demand; also, the popularity of the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes is making the Silver Valley known for more than its shimmering ski slopes.