‘Stop the presses!’ How we rip up the front page when news breaks after deadline

Like other major historical events, we’re all likely to remember where we were when news broke of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on Saturday, July 13.

The first notification I got was at 6:28 pm local time via a company group chat platform. A weekend editor dropped this Reuters news alert:

“BREAKING: Sounds of multiple shots were heard at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania, with the Republican presidential candidate raising a fist as he was escorted to a vehicle by the US Secret Service, video footage from event showed.”

It was 3:28 pm in Los Angeles, where I was for a week-long Hispanic journalism conference and jobs expo. While I was finishing editing an article by a cub reporter for a student project, I saw several other notes dropped in the chat, including:

“Hey, all, I recommend you get this on your A1s (front pages) if deadline permits,” wrote Dave Sharp, a senior editor with Advance Local, who oversees production of the online newspaper’s Update section. “We’ll of course cover it in Update as much as we can.”

Sharp’s missive underpins how committed we are to getting a major breaking news story into print, but also how we’re driven to serve subscribers with additional coverage in our online newspaper (enewssl.nj.com) after a big story unfolds late in the day .

The Star-Ledger’s print deadline on Saturdays is 5:30 pm The press starts rolling at 6. By the time an editor called to “Stop the presses!” many newspapers had already been printed and were on their way to distribution centers to be delivered early Sunday morning. Some of you got those editions. Most of you saw the dramatic photos of blood on the former president’s face on the front page.

“I like to think of newspapers as the first draft of history, and this was very much the first draft,” said Brittney Davies, senior editor at The Star-Ledger.“If we had more time, the front page probably would have looked different.”

Davies was about to go sailing in New York Harbor out of her Jersey City sailing club to unplug from the news cycle after a long week at work. Fortunately, she said, she looked at her phone around 6:30 before leaving the dock, catching several news alerts about the shooting that had taken place at 6:11.

She went back to her home office to help rearrange the front page with Sally Pakutka, an editor who had returned after signing off an hour earlier. Director of Publications Al Lukowicz and editor Phil Cornell, who were enjoying their day off, had also dropped what they were doing to race to their computers.

“Even though the presses had started running by then, we are able to update pages during the press run if needed,” said Davies, who joined The Star-Ledger in 2010 the day after graduating from Syracuse University’s SI Newhouse School of Public Communications. “If huge breaking news happens, or if we catch a bad mistake, we can go back and fix it.”

After editors update a page or pages, they are then sent to the pressroom. The press is stopped and the updated page replaces the original.

“The updates only make as many papers are still left to be printed,” Davies said.

That’s why last Sunday I got an angry email from a reader with this subject line: “NO Trump assassination attempt coverage in print edition????!!!!”

“It was really a matter of timing,” Davies said. “Everyone pulled together to change the front page as soon as the news broke.”

For years, much of the Sunday edition has been treated like a weekend magazine. We reserve spots for news and sports events scheduled on Saturday. But even before digital news became commonplace, deadlines to send the pages to the presses were often around 8 pm

Newspapers across the country have moved up their press deadlines in recent years amid changes in the industry, including greater use of the postal service for delivery and the consolidation of printing operations. So The Star-Ledger was far from the only newspaper that faced time constraints to get the story into print.

When breaking stories disrupt the original lineup, other articles are rearranged or cut out.

“There’s a lot that goes into changing the front page. You can’t just press a button,” Davies explained. “In this case, we were waiting for reporters who were on the scene to report it out and write a story. We were waiting for the news service, in this case the Associated Press, to edit and send it over wire feeds. And it wasn’t immediately clear what had happened at the rally, so it took time for the story to develop.”

The production team also localized the national story with comments from New Jersey officials, she said. All this while selecting photos, writing captions, headlines and other display type, along with proofreading and crosschecking facts before signing off on it.

“It was very much a race for time,” Davies said. “We were trying to make as many papers as possible.”

More than 60% of the papers distributed Sunday carried Trump on the cover.

In the meantime, Davies and company were in communication with the Update section editors about what didn’t make print. After the print edition is closed, think of the Update team as taking the baton in a relay race.

Dave Sharp was at a movie theater with his family to celebrate his daughter’s 17th birthday when he got pinged by a colleague. He oversees the Update section for the Ledger and a dozen other affiliated newspapers in Advance Local, our parent company.

“I jumped up immediately, ran outside into the hallway,” said Sharp, who started at the company in 2006 working for the Birmingham News. “At that point, the news was still super early. I thought it best to communicate to everyone who was working on print sections in different channels.”

Kent Kasey, a production editor for the Update section that night, worked with Sharp to decide what photos and wire story to use as well as the headline, captions and other details.

“We knew we definitely needed to rip up the cover for everyone,” said Sharp, who still works in Helena, Alabama, not far from Birmingham. “The inside page came together organically. “When things like this happen, you have a few facts, a lot of conjecture, and you really kind of have to give the news time to percolate and mature to see what facts we’re going to be able to put in front of the readers.”

For the Update section of the online newspaper, Sharp and his team have until midnight to “hit the send button.” It’s more time than the print side, and it’s often used to carry sports coverage after the paper goes to press. But, technically, the product still has to make its way online in order for you to have it before you wake up in the morning.

Fortunately, Sharp was able to have dinner with his daughter and the rest of the family just before the print edition went to press and the baton was handed over to his team. Kasey hits the button at 11:30 p.m.

Enrique Lavin is the editor of online newspapers. Email him at [email protected]

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