the triple threat
Yesterday morning, when my editor got into the newsroom and I informed her that there was nothing all that exciting going on in the valley or in the world, she suggested that I maybe take it relatively easy.
After all, I had written a pair of B1 stories this week, along with two A1 stories, the latter of which was our big story on the lifting of California's same-sex marriage ban... next week... maybe.
So my editor said something along the lines of, "We won't give you any major A1 projects to do today."
But my morning project of resurrecting some of the legal analysis that was cut from Friday's Proposition 8 story for the Web eventually turned into an A1-candidate follow-up story.
Then, in the afternoon we got word that one of photographers was able to get some sweet shots of the Perseid meteor shower Thursday night that could definitely go on the front page of Saturday's paper, and I was asked to rehash my earlier meteor story so we had something to go along with the photo.
I also volunteered to put together a weather story for Saturday's paper, which I expected would go somewhere inside the Valley section — i.e., the B section — or maybe on B1 since we seemed to be light on both staff and stories yesterday.
During the editors' afternoon news meeting, though, I overheard the editor who usually picks out stories for the front page (or at least recaps the collectively-decided choices) rattle off a list of my three stories. I knew the first two were A1 candidates, but I figured the weather story would maybe just be teased from the front page to its actual home in Valley. Or, you know, maybe the editor had been asked, "What the hell was Indy doing today?" instead of "What's going on A1?"
After the meeting, I didn't bother to ask anyone about my suspicion that perhaps all of my stories would end up on the front page. I was more concerned with getting all three of the stories done and filed since I had things to do in the post-work afternoon/evening that I was running late for.
Anyway, fast-forward to this morning, when I checked Today's Front Pages on newseum.org and found that, yes, I did write all three of the front-page stories in today's Desert Sun. Awesome.