At Poynter Online, Steve Klein is amazed that the Chronicle rushed an “Extra” edition to print following the Enron verdict:
I don’t know whether I should laugh or cry. Three hours AFTER announcement of the Enron verdict Thursday, according to a story you don’t want to miss in the New York Times, the Houston Chronicle published a two-page wrapper to the final newsstand edition with the headline, “Guilty! Guilty!”
Newspapers still do “extras” in the age of 24/7 news on the Internet? What for? Was it a vanity issue? A collector’s item?
(Both John Wagner and Mike McGuff scanned copies of the “Extra” edition.)
The New York Times story is an interesting read:
The editor of The Chronicle, Jeff Cohen, suggested an “extra,” or a two-page edition that would wrap around Thursday’s paper, which was already on newsstands. (That paper’s lead headline: “D.C. in Tug of War on Immigration.”)
[snip]
The last time The Chronicle published an extra was Feb. 1, 2003, when the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated over East Texas. Before that, the paper distributed an extra on Sept. 11, 2001; on Jan. 28, 1986, when the Challenger exploded; when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963; and when Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941.
I’m not sure the Enron verdict ranks up there with 9/11, JFK’s assassination, and Pearl Harbor, but then again, I’m just a news consumer, not a newspaper management expert. The fact that Chron.com had to go to a stripped down front page for a period of time on Thursday tells us how many people got their Enron news, I think, and it wasn’t from dead trees. (I would also guess that the local television news websites had greatly increased traffic as well. I know I was glued to KHOU.com and KTRK.com for verdict news.)
