Playing musical chairs

What editor Steve Smith termed “interesting logistical twists” resulted in a lot of last-minute story placement changes for today’s paper.

The four articles in question were the A1 centerpiece, the Northwest centerpiece (the Spokane evacuee from Lebanon), the fire retardant story published below the fold on the front page, and our latest Zehm coverage.

The Zehm story was “grossly underplayed,” senior editor Carla Savalli said. She noted that it is an issue of fairness and transparency that we present the city’s side in the same way that we have played other Zehm coverage.

The article ended up inside the Northwest section.

“We’ll take a hit for it,” Smith said.

The original plan was to have the fire retardant story as A1 centerpiece, the evacuee story as B1 centerpiece, the “Digging in, getting out” wire story down the right hand side with a blurb leading readers to the evacuee story on B1, and the latest Zehm coverage with more prominence.

(business editor Addy Hatch: The evacuee story was “vastly more interesting than it sounded on the budget line”)

We didn’t have the benefit of hearing from people involved in the late decisionmaking from last night’s story placement, Smith said. However by a combination of different factors including the time stories came in, some stories didn’t end up where editors wanted them to be.

Smith also noted that the placement of these stories is something most readers could care less about.