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How does the Bee choose stories for the front page?

The big headline today is "Congress OKs Bush-friendly war bill." Farther down the front page, there is an article about Las Vegas visitors who feel compelled to rent scooters to tour the Strip. Meanwhile, secreted away on page A6 is the story "Opposition to Iraq war at all-time high."

Instead of a fluff piece on lazy Vegas visitors, why isn't the war-opposition article paired with the war-funding article on the front page where they both belong?

Patrick Kelly

Thanks for your excellent question. Picking a front page is rarely easy, but in the case of the two stories you mention, the choice was plain.

In short: one story was news, and the other wasn't.

True, the poll story was important, and certainly timely, given Thursday's House vote on war funding. But it also was a familiar story. It was more of the same -- and no one who reads a newspaper would be surprised by it.

A story doesn't have to be surprising to belong on the front page, of course. Some are too important to go anywhere else -- like the House vote. One function of a front page is to mark significant moments in history.

But when we can replace a routine story with something that startles -- who would have imagined that able-bodied tourists would take to electric wheelchairs in Vegas? -- we do.

Just-plain-interesting stories like that also provide a dash of entertainment to balance all the serious news. A front page has to mark important events, highlight critical new information and give readers insight into the quirky world around us, all at the same time.

Answered by at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)

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Betsy Lumbye was named senior vice president and executive editor in 2006. After coming to Fresno as assistant managing editor in 1997, she was promoted to managing editor the following year. She was managing editor at The Herald in Rock Hill, S.C.; was metro editor at The Record in Stockton; was a reporter, assistant city editor and city editor at The Knoxville (Tenn.) Journal; and was a reporter at The Colorado Springs Sun. She graduated from the University of Virginia, where she majored in English and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society.

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