What I wish people knew about the IC

Friday, Jan. 30, 2015

Newsworthiness, space, staff time: These are the three constraints that form every decision regarding the content of this newspaper.

If an event isn’t of interest to Catholics in Utah, then it won’t appear in these pages. If the stories that already have been assigned will fill these pages, then it’s unlikely I’ll be able to shoehorn in another, even if it is newsworthy. Similarly, if I and my staff have a full workload, then I probably won’t assign another story, even if it is newsworthy. 

Obviously, this requires judgment calls. If news breaks late, I have to decide whether to ignore it or bump something to make room (both in the writers’ schedules and on the page).

Certain things are a given for this newspaper. Top news goes, in order of importance, on pages one, three and back page. Around the Diocese and the world news pages will run every week, as will obituaries when they are submitted. Anything by or about Bishop Wester is a priority. Sometimes significant world or national news requires additional pages. Columnists must appear on their assigned weeks. If the paper is larger than 12 pages, the Opinions page must run.

With those column inches already committed, I then have to determine how many pages will be dedicated to Spanish-language stories. Ideally, every story would appear in both Spanish and English, but this isn’t possible, given the space constraints of the newspaper pages. 

You can see that it’s not possible for us to include in this paper everything that might be of interest. We simply don’t have room on the page.

As for staff time – myself, Christine Young and Laura Vallejo are the writers. We go to as many diocesan, parish, and Catholic school events as we can. Obviously, we can’t get to them all, so I really appreciate when a parishioner sends in a photo and caption information, or a story. I’m very willing to help write such a submitted story, if needed. (One important note: We can’t publish pictures taken by cell phones unless the phone is set to take high-resolution photos. Otherwise, they’re too small, and we can’t enlarge them because they get too pixilated.)

Occasionally I’m requested to publish an article that ran in another publication. Copyright laws prohibit this; it’s illegal to reprint something without permission of the writer or the original publisher. Even if they do agree to grant reprint rights, they often request payment, which I can’t afford.

I also receive suggestions that we run stories about Catholic students in public schools. I’d love to do this, but the truth is, we don’t know about them. I’d really appreciate proud parents (or other relatives/friends) telling us about their students’ significant accomplishments. I can’t promise we’ll be able to publish every story, but we’ll certainly try. 

A final thing I wish people understood about my professional life: It’s run by deadlines. Stories are assigned to writers two weeks before they see print, because we need time to interview sources and write.

We go to print Tuesday, which means the deadline is the previous Friday for outside stories and columns and Around the Diocese submissions. If a story comes in late, then the editing is late, which means page layout is late, which means proofing is late, which means we miss the print deadline, which means the paper is delivered late to the post office, which means you receive it late, which annoys all of us, and I try hard to avoid that.