Duluth News Tribune executive editor Rob Karwath's memo
From: Karwath, Rob
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 200610:13 AM
To: DNT Newsroom
Subject: Stopping the press last night
Colleagues,
As some of you know, we had a wild ride last night. We stopped the press at about 2:30 a.m. after the press room alerted me that the West Virginia miners' story on Page One was inaccurate. Early wire reports said 12 of the 13 trapped miners had survived. As we know now, only one was found alive in the mine.
An alert colleague in pre-press, Brandon Scott, saw the story turning on a TV in our newsroom. He alerted pressroom foreman Jim Hill, who called me. Craig Gustafson and I raced downtown. Craig quickly remade Page One and the jump.
We were able to get the accurate story in more than half our papers. Unfortunately, it was too late for the first copies, which already were printed and on their way to more distant distribution areas. We appear to be one of the few papers in the eastern half of the U.S. that was able to pull back and replate.
Marti has issued the following news release on the situation. Many thanks to Brandon, Jim and Craig--and the entire Production and Distribution crew--for making it happen last night. If anyone receives calls from readers who got the early edition, please direct them to the Web site for the latest story--and to me if they want to speak to an editor.
Rob
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Duluth, Minn. - Hibbing, Virginia and other areas outside of the Duluth-Superior city zone got a different version of their newspaper this morning. Early this morning, the Duluth News Tribune discovered that initial information on the mining accident in West Virginia was incorrect. The report stated that 12 of the 13 trapped miners had been found alive. Later reports confirmed the inaccuracy of that statement In fact, only one of the miners survived.
"The new information was received after we had already gone to press,"
stated Rob Karwath, executive editor of the Duluth News Tribune. "We literally had to stop the presses to rewrite the story."
Since it was already 2:30 a.m., Publisher Marti Buscaglia made the call to send the already printed newspapers onto the IronRange and other outlying areas that would receive their newspapers too late in the morning otherwise.
"Although we are sensitive that any information on the mining community would be of intense interest to our readers on the IronRange, we had to weigh the fact that receiving local news prior to the morning commute was even more important. It was a tough call, and I sincerely hope our readers understand. Printing inaccurate information in the newspaper and having to send it out that way is unfortunate,
indeed, but we had to work with the information we had at the time."
The newspaper's Web site, contains the latest stories on the incident and a note to readers on the inaccurate information.