Boiling with irony

The story on the University of Idaho saying no thanks to intelligent design moved late on the wire last night and quickly onto the front page. Higher ed reporter Shawn Vestal is planning a follow-up for the weekend.

The story is getting a lot of readers, too. How do we know? Because they’ve been calling all morning wondering what the last two words are (“Seriously lacking.” And that’s what the missing words are, too). Valley readers may have noticed that the jumpline on page A1 sends them to page A6, but the story actually continues on page A7. A design error is to blame.

Addendum: OK, OK. Technically, it’s a “production” error. Apologies to the design department, who had nothing whatsoever to do with the mistake.

More on G-Prep

Readers are constantly telling us how much they hate having to follow jumps. Research shows they seldom follow them. For now, to provide some relief, we have a policy of having at least one story hold to the front page each day, which we informally call the “biter” (if you haven’t had enough dry humor for today, this story was one of the top candidates last night).

There was broad support for running the story on a generous $3.4 million donation to Gonzaga Prep on the front page, and, of the six front page stories, it was the easiest to trim. However, if we had the space, we could have gone into more detail about how the school helps lower-income students attend (the program gets a brief mention at the end) - combatting a common misperception that it’s strictly an enclave for rich kids.

Roberts watch

There was some trepidation about the choice to lead with the Supreme Court hearings on Oregon’s assisted suicide law. Gary Graham’s daily, unscientific scan of front pages shows that the story wasn’t played prominently outside of Oregon (it played low on the Seattle Times and New York Times front pages, as well as in San Diego and Bridgeport, Conn., presumably others).

Arguments in favor of the decision: This case, dealing with privacy rights and federal authority over the states, could indicate the direction new chief justice John Roberts will take the court on abortion and other social issues; and also, the issue is of regional importance because people from Washington state do go to Oregon to take advantage of legal physician-assisted suicide. Arguments against: It’s misleading to insinuate a single day’s arguments on this case alone will establish a trend for future court cases; and while the issue may be of regional importance, it’s not important enough to our community to justify a lead front-page presence.

It’s not easy being green

Kudos to the pre-press department for their work on today’s sports centerpiece . We’re told that that shade of green is difficult to reproduce, and Valley editor Jeff Jordan assures us that the color was spot-on.