J-school: Editors' choices

I enjoy the choices part of journalism — Where do we put this story? Should it go out front or inside? Should this story run at all? But sometimes good journalists get confused or lazy.

In 1990, I had just finished covering a race at North Carolina Speedway in Rockingham and settled down in a motel room to watch the TV sports news. They announced that Hank Gathers, the great All-American basketball player, had died on court, and I thought, "I know what will lead our sports section tomorrow."

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Amazingly, we ran that story in the lead of the sports briefs package. It was a matter of convenience, and, frankly, we blew it.
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We did the same thing when a hockey goalie was in a car wreck and was effectively brain dead. It wasn't my decision; this was a great hockey player, and the story was bigger than the treatment we gave it.
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Alan Kulwicki died in 1993. I was working the sports desk that night, and someone wanted to lead briefs with Kulwicki. I argued that the defending Winston Cup champion deserved better (I was the paper's auto-racing writer). Some papers would have put Kulwicki on the A front, not just the sports front.
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In the end, we put Kulwicki on the sports front, but it was a battle.
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I don't want people to think I was always right; I wasn't. I made bad choices, too. But I did learn a lesson from all of those battles. I always left a "throwaway" spot on the sports front, at the top or bottom, in case someone died or another big story came in just before deadline. That story never jumped, so the important news story would have to stay on the front. But at least it'd make the paper, and we could follow it up the next day.
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Of course, people don't always appreciate choices. One woman called a paper where I worked and wanted to know why a certain story didn't get in the paper and who made the choice. I told her the name of the big editor, and she said, "Who does he think he is to make that choice?" I told her that someone has to make the choice, and he was pretty good at it.
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Years ago, a mother was aggravating me to write a story on her son. She assailed me at a high-school basketball game, and she later went to my boss (apparently she assailed him, too). He told her that I was the best sports editor he'd ever had and that he stood by my choices. I appreciated his confidence. (Besides, I asked the local basketball coach if anyone would want to see a story on that mother's son, and he said no. I ran something on the kid in briefs, of all places. She didn't get her feature story.)
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Readers think that newspapers run stories to increase circulation. If it's sensational, great. I've never worked at a paper that thought that way (and I've worked at nine of them). Editors were always looking for the stories that need to make the paper, and sometimes others get cut out.
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Have I ever put a story inside that "should" have gone outside. Sure. Sometimes you have no choice.