Editors learn from readers’ rich discussion…

Editors are regular people too, or so they think.

So why is it that readers often disagree with editors on news decisions or story placement? Could it be that journalists are too close to the reporting and editing process for their own good? Perhaps. However, journalists would argue that readers don’t always know what goes into the news-gathering process.

This is why the media sometimes turn to the everyday news consumer to find out what he or she thinks, and to give the consumer a chance to look inside the process. It’s always an …

Broken bridge…

Its easy to understand in the box to the side which sequence of editions is closer to readers, at least as regards a concrete problem in their city, in this case, So Paulo.

The news concerns the explosion of a truck on a freeway in the early hours of Saturday, Nov. 8, an event which damaged a bridge, required interdiction, detour of a route, and a traffic bottleneck which was 17 miles long that Saturday.

It foresaw serious problems and delays on a crucial roadway affecting millions of people, including residents of nearby …

Bridge players call Trib’s bluff, win back beloved column…

I learned to play bridge in college — where our group assigned a certain degree-of-difficulty rating to the rubbers by insisting that you be able to hold your liquor and carry on a witty and philosophical conversation at the same time you were trying to finesse the queen to grab an extra trick.

At heart, I am a spades aficionado — which also defines me as a crap-shooter personality type. Spades is a card game with a bidding system based on the number of tricks you can take when spades are always the trump …

Much remains to report about the fires…

The reader was serious, but his telephone message gave me pause. He said it was time to move on. The San Diego Union-Tribune had covered the fires, but now he wanted to read about other things that were going on in the world.

It was obvious to me he was not one of the thousands of San Diegans who had lost homes in the fires that pushed other events off the front page. No one in the county came away unscathed by the fires. We all lost a piece of what makes this area …

Internet tale started with misleading headline…

Yellowstone will blow again no telling when.

So read the headline atop a story about geological goings-on in the Norris Geyser Basin at Yellowstone National Park. The story, written by Scott Canon of The Kansas City Star’s National Desk, was originally published in The Star on Oct. 7. Problem is, that wasn’t our headline.

The story and controversial headline have set off a flurry of spam, Internet discussion groups and amateur geologist Web logs. The spam letter attributes the headline to The Kansas City Star, and adds that when Yellowstone blows, geologists are saying …

That’s how life is (not)…

Thats how life is (not)

By Bernardo Ajzenberg

November 9, 2003

Folha usually does well with stories about power, whether executive, legislative or judicial. Despite some fluctuations, thats what happened with coverage of activities this week involving the Federal Police and prosecutors (Operation Anaconda) and of the two attacks against police in So Paulo.

Two other cases which emerged in recent days, meanwhile, reveal the lack of understanding and insensitivity of the newspaper, even in an indirect way, toward the affected topic, real life, the pocketbooks and daily lives of readers.

A few …

Toerr is human, to correct is newspaper’s duty…

I recently made perhaps the most embarrassing mistake possible in The Oregonian: I allowed an error to appear in a correction fixing an earlier error.

I apologize to you, as readers, for my mistake. My sloppy editing allowed a misspelling of the name of the late tenor Franco Corelli to appear.

I felt sick to my stomach when I discovered the error. Many journalists do when they make a mistake, not because of the public embarrassment but because they are committed to accuracy and know their work reflects on not just their own credibility but also …

Here’s a chance for readers to try on the editors’ hats…

A decade of declining readership figures has newspaper executives across the nation wondering how to engage and win back subscribers.

Millions of dollars have been poured into national readership studies of habits tracking everything from how often and in what direction your eyeballs move as they scan a page to your attitudes about the content of your local newspaper and your feelings about whether opinions are creeping into the news stories.

Perhaps the most surprising information discovered in these kinds of studies is the fact that most daily subscribers to newspapers feel a certain …

Disaster stories by the millions…

If you drew a breath in San Diego last week, you felt the horrible power of the wildfires that reaped such destruction on our county. Tops among the heroes of October are the firefighters, emergency personnel and others who risked their lives to fight for the rest of us. One firefighter was killed; others were injured.

Some of our friends and neighbors paid with their lives; many lost homes, including at least three people in the Union-Tribune family. Staff members were among the thousands of San Diegans who were evacuated because of fire danger.…

Obscurity in the media…

Obscurity in the media

By Bernardo Ajzenberg

November 2, 2003

When dealing with investigating the crises in civil aviation, electric energy companies, telecommunications or any other economic sector in difficulty, the media are implacable.

Newspapers compete among themselves on a daily basis to see what they can report first and who gets the most details about the status of debt, negotiations, stock moves, mergers, analyses by experts, loans or financing plans, firings, and fraud in earnings reports.

Something different occurs, however, when stories about the media are in the news. In that case, …