We took a few calls Friday from readers (only one of whom left her name) who thought the Fort Hood tragedy deserved space on the front page. That day, we had a ribbon across the top of A1, referring to a relatively tiny story on page A7.
No question, we goofed up and should have made more room for the story inside. More arguably, we could have made room for a stronger presence on the front page, though we keep the front page as devoted to local/area news as possible. That's far and away the main reason people buy us -- local news -- and we take that seriously, maybe too seriously when a major story like this breaks.
Here are the calls I took:
I just picked up my paper and of course again, it hardly mentioned anything about Fort Hood on the front page. I don't understand it. It's the most important news in our nation and you devote a little bit of a line item to it. This is nuts, this is supposed to be a newspaper, and yeah, the jury convicts an Austin cop is probably of some interest also, but I just don't see how that compares to our nation. Something is drastically wrong with this newspaper.
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I subscribe to the paper and I'm just wondering why you don't have more on the Fort Hood killings when people from Minnesota are involved and you stick (the story) on a little back page. I think it's very upsetting and I don't know if I'll keep getting your newspaper. Thank you for your time.
(I'm not aware of a strong Minnesota or Southeast Minnesota angle on this story. We did our best to find a local/area connection for Friday's edition and were unsuccessful...if we had, the story would have been on the front page.)
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We're subscribers to the paper, we've bought it for 30 years, and my husband and I are really disappointed -- looking at the paper tonight, we see that on page A7 is a little four-paragraph story on the Fort Hood rampage...his is the worst mass killing in U.S. military history and we get it on the seventh page, a little column. We buy our newspaper to get the news. We're very disappointed. You put other things on the front page that aren't important at all.
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I receive your paper and I'm truly disgusted that you didn't have on the front page the Fort Hood rampage, and all you had on page 7 was this tiny little corner. You should be ashamed of yourself. Your Post-Bulletin newspaper is becoming so liberal that I know many people are just going to cancel their subscription. I cannot believe you didn't think that was important enough to make the front page. You should be ashamed.
That last comment is intriguing -- I guess our supposed "liberal" bias kept that story off the front page since the alleged gunman is an American-born Muslim? Not sure if the reader really intended to connect those dots.
At bottom, though, we haven't given this story enough coverage. We'll get more Tuesday and henceforth.
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