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? The "extra," according to the Times story -- which does not mention how the Chronicle was handling the story online -- hit newsstands at 2 p.m. CT, reporting on the verdicts of former Enron chief executives Kenneth L.
Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling.
Here's the timeline, according to the Times story: The Chronicle newsroom became aware of a pending decision about 10:20 a.m.; the announcement was scheduled for 11 a.m.; the editorial staff finished by 1 p.m.; presses rolled at 1:30; by 2, 10,000 copies hit the streets, distributed by about a dozen Chronicle employees who pulled papers from newsstands to wrap with the special edition.
"Four employees were stationed in front of the courthouse downtown to hawk papers -- for 50 cents each -- to a swarm of reporters and spectators assembled there," The Times story reports. Shades of "The Front
Page"!
The last time the Chronicle published an extra was Feb. 1, 2003, when the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated over East Texas. See? Who needs the Internet as a delivery platform?
Uh ...
In this century I find it rather peculiar newspaper companies...
