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March 31, 2006
A sports weekend
Ah, to be back in the sports department.
Many of us got our start in the newspaper business in the sports department, covering local games. It's still a section that has the most passionate, devoted following of readers.
And this is the biggest weekend of the year for your newspaper sports pages. It's the one that gives sports editors gray hair, if they have any left.
It starts with the Final Four. The men's semifinal games are Saturday and the final game is Monday night. As a sports editor, you have to run "advances" all week telling readers what's coming, and then have coverage of the games in the Sunday paper. (Even though the second game should be over by 9 p.m., it's always hectic to get it in the paper because that's also the night of daylight savings time so we lose an hour of delivery time for your carriers.) This year, for us, it's an even bigger story because we have a local team, UCLA, in the Final Four and we have sports columnist David Lassen covering the event. (We hadn't planned to send a local writer ... and then UCLA up and made it.)
Then you have the women's Final Four. They used to be covered in agate only on the Scoreboard page. But they have passionate followers too. Those games are Sunday and Tuesday. Star sports writer Rhiannon Potkey is in Boston and will be writing about those games for us.
This weekend is also the start of the baseball season. So sports pages are giving you advances on the upcoming season. For us, that means a preview on the National League (we ran that today), a preview on the American League (we'll run that tomorrow) and previews on the Dodgers and Angels (we'll run those Sunday) and then opening day is Monday and we'll be covering it.
Then next week is the Masters. It's the biggest golfing event of the year. Star golf writer Bob Buttitta is going back to cover for us again this year and he'll have an advance on the tournament that we'll run in Sunday's paper.
And the MLS season is also kicking off next week, so we'll look to run advances on soccer.
Plus, of course, there's the "usual stuff," which includes coverage of the NBA, NHL and all our local college and high school teams.
As you might guess, sports editors tend to not grant vacation requests over this weekend.
Posted by vcs-admin at 10:20 AM
March 30, 2006
Page one "in play"
Our page one for tomorrow's Star is, as they say, "in play."
That could mean we're not sure we know what we're doing. Or it could mean that we have lots of choices.
We prefer the later description.
Immigration remains a subject that we'll be writing about on Page One for tomorrow. Star Sacramento bureau chief Timm Herdt will explore what the issue could mean for our fall gubernatorial election. We're also watching the debate in the Senate to see what happens today, and we'll have something on President Bush's trip to Cancun to meet with Canadian and Mexican officials ... where migration is sure to be a topic.
In addition to all that, we'll tease you tomorrow about our upcoming Sunday package looking at illegal immigration in Ventura County.
In addition to immigration, here are some of the other stories "in play" for Page One:
-- Budget cuts may eliminate the American Indian health clinic in Santa Barbara. There are 7,000 Indians in Ventura County and the loss of the clinic means that for some of them, the closest available health care will be in Palm Springs.
-- State and federal officials are meeting in LA to talk about the bird flu. Our local officials are listening in on the conference and we'll give us their thoughts on how well prepared we are ... or aren't ... for this potential pandemic.
-- A summit in Oxnard today wrestles with the issue of sustainability of Ventura County's agriculture industry.
-- Reporter Jill Carroll was released today in Baghdad after three months of captivity.
-- The Massachusetts Supreme Court says non-residents of the state can't take advantage of their same-sex marriage laws.
-- And Delphi, the auto parts company, may try to cut its union contract today in hopes of lower wages. That could trigger a strike, which could mean real problems for GM and other auto manufacturers.
See: we're "in play."
We'll make some tentative decisions at 3 o'clock this afternoon.
Can you pick your top 4-5 stories off this list?
Posted by vcs-admin at 10:06 AM
March 29, 2006
What to do ... what to do
We don't want anybody to think there's nothing to do here in Ventura County.
In tomorrow's Arts & Living section and in the Time Out section, we're full of places to go and things to do.
In Arts & Living, staff writer Brett Johnson tells the moving story of Christopher Fielder, who plays the lead in the Ventura College production of "Cabaret." Fielder is channeling a personal tragedy into his performance, which opens Friday. You'll want to read Brett's story.
That section will also have a review of the Thousand Oaks' production of "Forever Plaid" by our art critic Rita Moran. We also will tell you about a long list of other events from the American Big Band concert in Oxnard next week to the De Colores Art Show, also in Oxnard, to a poetry event wiht U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins down at UCLA.
Time Out features another story by Brett Johnson. This one is an interview with Phil Hendrie. He used to work for Ventura radio stations and has moved on with a career that has now taken him to NBC-TV where he is co-starring in their new comedy, "Teachers."
Posted by vcs-admin at 09:48 AM
March 27, 2006
Immigration
All you have to do is mention immigration to get a huge response from our readers who share their views of news via the comments we attach to stories.
Look for a lot of comments this week.
We covered the huge Los Angeles rally on Saturday and today we're covering a couple of student-led rallies in Ventura and Oxnard. We're also following the legislative battles in Washington.
And coming Sunday will be a fascinating package that will look at the face of illegal immigration in Ventura County.
When the immigration protests happened this morning, we rushed to cover them and decided to hang onto an interesting story on plans to teach Chinese in some local area high schools. Look for that story on Wednesday.
Then of course there's coverage of the NCAA tournament. Sports writer Rhiannon Potkey, who has been covering UCLA's march through March Madness switches hats this week and goes off to cover the women's Final Four. Sports columnist David Lassen steps in and will chase the Bruins to Indianapolis for Saturday's big game ... and Monday's, too, if they win.
Posted by vcs-admin at 10:20 AM
March 24, 2006
The Friday shuffle
While many of you spend Fridays wrapping up your work for the week, newspaper folks spend Fridays putting together the equivalent of three days worth of newspapers.
We're doing the Saturday paper, as you might expect. But we're also finishing off everything we can for Sunday's paper. And doing the same for Monday's paper.
That's because we have minimal staffing on the weekends ... everybody except the Sports department, of course, which is always fully staffed on weekends because that's when we play our games. Otherwise, we run a lean ship on our desk with editors checking the wire services, producing "live" pages and a small local news staff of reporters and an editor covering the weekend and watching for breaking news.
That means we spend Fridays shuffling copy around to make sure we have enough for all the upcoming editions.
Today, for example, we've got an interesting Page One display (that's what we call the big story and photo in the middle of the page) on St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, which has just received really high marks for its coronary artery bypass surgeries.
Sunday, our display is a package of stories on school nurses ... and what happened to them.
And Monday we've got a great yarn on a 1944 mid-air plane collision over Camarillo. You'll have to read why that's back in the news.
That's the plan. Unless we shuffle things around some more.
Posted by vcs-admin at 01:16 PM
March 23, 2006
A mistake ... is a mistake
We made a big mistake in today's Star. One of our two comic pages was the Feb. 23 page instead of the March 23 page.
In the newspaper business you learn a few things very quickly. One is that there is no small mistake. And, two, that when you make a mistake, it lives for eternity. If I make a mistake in this blog, I can go back in a minute after it's posted online and correct it. If I make a mistake in the paper (say, maybe, printing the wrong comics page, for instance), it will be there. Forever.
So, how did today's mistake happen?
When the page got ready to be put on the press, we looked into our computer system for the comics page of the 23rd and pulled the page from last month instead of this month. There are all kinds of checks and balances we have built into our system. One of which is to check the comics themselves, which are individually dated in fine print. But obviously in the rush to produce yesterday's paper, we didn't fully check it out.
And part of the problem is our system. We have a new operating system for our newsroom. Normally, pages a month old are not accessible. But because we are having trouble with the archive portion of our new system, we are not purging old files out of the system until we know the archive is working. Those pages should be gone in two weeks into the archive. They weren't.
Our solution is to reprint that page in tomorrow's Star, along with tomorrow's comics. Of course you can't just add one page to a paper, so we had to add two pages to the Arts & Living section. And that costs us some money, in addition to the loss of goodwill by those of you out there who think were sloppy, or worse, in printing old comics and puzzles.
Posted by vcs-admin at 10:50 AM
March 22, 2006
Step right up and vote
In the six years since the great hanging chad incidents of the 2000 presidential election, federal and state officials have been pushing for a new way of casting our ballots. It's been controversial, to say the least. The most controversial is the fully electronic systems, which many California counties will be trying in his June's election. There was another lawsuit filed yesterday to stop the use of those machines.
Ventura County has taken a different tack. They're going from the punch-card system to a pen-and-paper system. You'll mark your ballot with a pen and then it will get immediately run through an optical scanner which will record the ballot and let you know if there are any problems. We'll show you how it works in tomorrow's Star.
Inside, we'll give you the latest on Thursday's NCAA March Madness game between UCLA and Gonzaga. Sports writer Rhiannon Potkey is back on the road this week covering UCLA.
Also there's lots of entertainment coverage in tomorrow's Star. From Time Out to the Arts & Living section, there will be advances and coverage of a whole range of things to do this weekend. I'd tell you ... but our entertainment writers do a better job of it. Check it out.
Posted by vcs-admin at 09:57 AM
March 20, 2006
The word of the day is ...
Tonight's the Ventura County Spelling Bee and we'll give you complete coverage in tomorrow's Star. If you have never seen one in person, trust me that they can really be interesting and exciting events. I used to have the chance to watch the national finals when I worked in Washington D.C.
If you haven't had a chance, check out Tom Kisken's piece in Sunday's Star on three of the top spellers in this year's Bee. And, if you read it online, be sure to click on Tom's great video of his interviews ... editing by Anthony Plascencia. They're just kids. But they're pretty amazing kids.
Also tomorrow in the Star we'll have the first extended interview that Yolanda Benitez has given since she was ousted as superintendent of El Rio School district. Benitez just settled with the school board for more than $1.4 million. She talks about what happened, what she's doing and her view of hte future of the district. Staff writer John Scheibe snagged the interview with Benitez.
Posted by vcs-admin at 10:40 AM
March 17, 2006
We're back
Sorry to have been away. But now The Star's daily blog of the news is back.
It's raining. That's always news for us. And it could make for a soggy St. Patrick's Day parade in Ventura tomorrow (and for those building the floats today).
One of the stories we're chasing for tomorrow's Star is the sudden disappearance of the Anacapa Bread Co. Our food reporter checked in with them Monday and all was well at the combined cafe and bakery. And then, poof, the door's locked, and equipment, counters and ovens are gone. It's particularly hard on the dozens of local restaurants that relied on the Bread Co. for their daily bread. We're trying to figure out today who were regular clients and what they're going to do.
Looking ahead a bit, it's going to be another good Sunday paper, so block out some reading time.
Tom Kisken has a wonderful story on our local spelling bee, which will be held Monday night. Tom interviewed three local spellers and tracked their path to the local bee ... and they hope on to Washington D.C. It's a great read on who these kids are and why they do this. Tom also put together, with help of our New Medic editor Anthony Plascenia, a video of the spellers that will be up online.
And Sunday we'll also give the first of two days of coverage of the third anniversay of the Iraq War. Stephanie Hoops is interviewing local folks on both sides of the issue for a Sunday story and Zeke Barlow has a Monday story on the Ventura County men and women who earned a Purple Heart in Iraq.
And then there's the NCAA tournament. We're doing all that work today with every TV in the office showing basketball games. And with all of us checking our brackets. Once again this year, my wife is doing better than I am. At least I picked more than half of Thursday's games correctly. Barely.
Posted by vcs-admin at 09:52 AM
