EDITOR'S NOTE: In June 2004 I began a new venture as managing editor of both Northfield News and Faribault Daily News. This column originally appeared in the Northfield News on March 24, 2006.
Putting out a newspaper is a humbling experience. Some days you feel on top of the world, thinking you've put out an edition that is valuable and educational for the community. And other days you feel like a goat, knowing you've just produced a paper with an embarrassing error for thousands of readers to see. As many readers let us know, Wednesday's edition was one of the second variety. Due to an error in our process of sending pages from our computers to the computers at our print plant, we failed to correctly update the graphics on our opinion page and thus produced a "Cheers and Jeers" editorial that showed five frowny face graphics that should have been cheerful, smiley characters. For those who are not familiar with the feature we call "Cheers and Jeers," it's an editorial we publish periodically that gives brief "cheers" to good and positive things happening in the community and "jeers" to things that aren't so positive. Thus, there is supposed to be a smiley face graphic accompanying the cheers and a grumpy-looking frowny face with the jeers. This past Wednesday however, everything turned out to be a frown. Let's just say that when I opened up the paper on Wednesday, that error in addition to taking away the smiley faces on the page, also took away the smiley faces from me (and my boss Publisher Louie Seesz). Although I know some secretly may think that being cynical newspaper people, we are more prone to frowny faces, and Wednesday's mistake was done intentionally. That's just not the case; I promise. Unfortunately we made an error that stuck out like the dirty dishes do when you get an unexpected visitor. And the problems didn't end there. In addition, in the bottom right hand box on our front page, I promoted that in Saturday's edition we'd be inserting our annual spring Home and Garden special section. And indeed we will be ... it just will be in next Wednesday's edition, not today's. As a matter of fact, we are inserting another special publication, called "Family Matters," and that is what should have been promoted instead. Strike two for us. For all of you who were anxiously awaiting the Home and Garden tab, I promise you that it is coming. You'll just have to wait another five days. However, we do hope that you'll enjoy the new "Family Matters" section you'll find in today's paper. I promise it's just as good of a read. So, all in all, Wednesday's edition was one of those you'd just like to forget. Now, I know there was a lot of good stuff in Wednesday's paper. Our reporters covered local issues very well; we had great stories in the sports section; and we produced our very exciting second edition of "Diversions," our new weekly arts, entertainment and dining guide. These were all good things, but unfortunately as the managing editor it's the errors that keep me up at night and that I get paid to worry about. (At least that's what Louie tells me.) I know there are bigger mistakes newspapers have made; heck, I've made bigger mistakes that were far more embarrassing. (Just ask me sometime about the incident when at another newspaper, we dropped the letter "l" from the word "public" in the dominant Page 1 headline. Yea, try living that one down.) But, the errors such as the ones that occurred in Wednesday's paper still haunt you. Or at least, as an editor, I believe they should. Unlike the errors other businesses make that only some customers may find out about, when we make an error, it's out there for thousands to see. So, I apologize for the frowny faces in Wednesday's "Cheers and Jeers" editorial, and I hope that you were able to swallow it with as much good humor as my boss Louie did this week. Although he's taken to calling me "Mr. Frowny Face," he did have a good point when he told the Rotary Club Thursday that if you turned the page upside down, the frowny faces actually would have all been smiley faces. I liked his idea and I appreciated his support, but I don't know many people who like to read their paper backwards and upside down. (If you do, call me, there's got to be a story in that.) Ultimately, Wednesday's paper calls for us to jeer ourselves. It's unfortunate that the really good items in that Cheers and Jeers may have been overlooked because of an error that made the editorial comical. I apologize to those mentioned in the cheers that deserved better. I can't guarantee you that we won't make more mistakes in the future -- in fact I've never worked at a paper that published a perfect newspaper -- but I will guarantee you this: We'll endure the good-natured ribbing that we deserve, and then we'll strive to publish another good newspaper today and next Wednesday and so on. In this line of work, we do have to wear a dunce hat once in a while, but we accept that it comes with the territory. And if you can chalk up Wednesday's frowny-gate scandal to us being human, I promise I'll do the same for you in the future. Thanks for allowing us to be human. -- Devlyn Brooks is managing editor of the Northfield News.
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