Tuesday, July 21, 2009

At The Times, It's Deja Vu All Over Again

That's Monday on the left and Tuesday on the right ... or maybe Monday on the right and ...

If you've glanced at The Roanoke Times sports section this morning, you've already had your deja vu moment for the day. The first two pages of our Tuesday section are the same as Monday's. There were a few differences on Page 3 and Page 4 was new, so at least you got some fresh scores (as fresh as newspaper scores can be, anyway) in the Scoreboard.

I won't even try to 'splain this one, Lucy. roanoke.com explained it this way: "Due to a printing error, some readers of The Roanoke Times will see parts of Monday's sports and classified section in today's printed paper. For updates on the latest sports news, go to www.roanoke.com. We apologize for the inconvenience." Not exactly full disclosure. We'll let Executive Editor Carole Tarrant do that, if she'd like. Ms. Tarrant, the "comment" box is at your disposal.

8 comments:

  1. It was hard not to notice, and also hard not to think, "that's more than an 'oops'".

    I've been reading a newspaper everyday for most of my 35 years. It was learned at an early age. That's what you do while eating breakfast. Most of those years the Sports section was the main course (these days it's dessert).

    In all that time, I can't remember a mistake like this. It's not earth-shattering. I was still able to finish my banana and OJ without too much difficulty.

    It was just one mistake, but it's symbolic. I might have turned the corner this morning. Looking ahead, I think I can finally envision the future without the daily local newsprint.

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  2. Well sure, but I'd rather have two repeat copies of The Roanoke Times than the VB Front.

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  3. Jay: There's no accounting for taste, but, hey I'll take that as a challenge to just keep getting better. Thank you for the inspiration.

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  4. By the way, did we notice the head on the repeated story: "Major letdown"? How prophetic.

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  5. I noticed that the date on the first page was today (Tuesday), but inside on the classifieds, the date was Monday.

    Just when I think the RT is as crappy as it's going to get, durned if they don't surprise me.

    Maybe today's paper was a test to see if the readers were paying attention. If no one complains, they'll recycle more used news, maybe?

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  6. Hi, Dan.

    Just came here for looking for your updated news for today. Unfortunately I did not find any.

    Looks like it is not so easy to put out a full newspaper every single day.

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  7. Jay: Did you check moreFRONT.blogspot.com? News there. I also wrote a cover story for the FRONT, edited seven stories, had two photo assignments and a press conference, ate lunch with one of our writers who is working on a story and needed some guidance, had a meeting with my partner on the November cover story, recruited two more teachers for our Roanoke Regional Writers Conference, talked to yet another writer about teaching a class for the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge's writers workshop, exercised for an hour and went to a baseball game in Salem with two good friends. I also cooked dinner for my wife. I hope your day was full, too.

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  8. Jay: Dang, nearly forgot. I'm also working on a book (shaping up as a novel) and a long-ish magazine piece for another publication. Time-consuming, they are.

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