We make dozens of decisions per day when we put out a newspaper and put stories online. What stories should make the front page? How big should the headline be? What should the picture be? What stories should dominate our homepage online? What should be the text shared on social media? What about captions, graphics, audio and video?
Sometimes during big breaking news, we don’t have a lot of time to make those decisions. But we recognize that to our readers, each decision says something about our priorities, and those priorities are often scrutinized. I can’t say we always make the right decision, but know that these decisions are not made lightly by editors, page designers, digital editors or photo editors.
And the decisions are complicated by the fact that we serve a wide audience. We are not a scientific journal or a sports website or food blog. We are many things to many people, so we have to make decisions based on what might be relevant to the widest possible audience each day.
It’s never an exact science. Sometimes we choose to highlight stories that are important, but perhaps not as familiar to readers. At other times, we feel that even though some may not feel a story is important, it’s something a large segment of our audience is talking about, and we want to be a part of that conversation.
We also try to deliver a mix of topics. We know the news can be heavy at times, and so we try to highlight the good things that are happening in our community, our nation and the world as well. So please let us know if you have good news stories to share.
Turning to our letters inbox, for the week of Aug. 14-28, we received 59 letters. The immigration debate continues to generate interest from all sides. We received five letters on the topic, most focused on conditions at ICE detention centers. The next most popular topic was the deployment of National Guard troops to cities in the United States to combat crime. Opinion was almost evenly split on this issue, with some saying cities should welcome the help while others saw using the military for domestic policing as setting a dangerous precedent. Lastly, our newly revamped weather page was the subject of four letters.