Routine callers help keep us on our toes

As Reader Representative, I have a group of people who call or e-mail me fairly regularly, whom I refer to, logically, as my "regulars."

They are mostly older, mostly male, and usually right. At least a couple are, predictably, former teachers. At least one, also predictably, is an engineer. (We all know about those engineers, right?)

When I came in Monday morning, I had four calls from one of them – three about errors in our paper and a fourth telling me he was wrong about one error.

I once returned a call from one of the regulars and got his wife instead. She was somewhat embarrassed about the mistake her husband had called to my attention and was (I hope pleasantly) surprised when I told her I enjoyed his calls and was glad he took the time to let us know when we make a mistake.

It’s not that we don’t hate every mistake we make, but knowing about them helps us not only correct them, but possibly prevent future mistakes.

Sometimes, rather than an error, the call might be about a matter of opinion. We journalists tend to, at least sometimes, break a few rules that English teachers feel fairly strong about. (Like ending sentences with prepositions.)

On occasion, they will test my knowledge and my research skills by questioning something that seems wrong, but actually is right. I wrote about such an event this time last year in the final entry of the October 2007 blog archive.

The regular callers or e-mailers have long-developed habits of doing exactly what we’ve tried to get our young readers to do. They are engaged and invested in what they consider to be "their" newspaper. In the same way other readers might type in anonymous comments to an on-line story, these readers share their thoughts with me. They aren’t different, they just prefer a face and a voice to a computer screen, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. We’ll take communication in any form we can get it and appreciate those who make the effort.

Perplexing puzzle problems plague paper

We ran seven corrections in our Tuesday edition. One of them was among the most dreaded -- a mistake in the Crossword Puzzle.

I say among the most dreaded because, obviously, if we accidentally liable someone or make another serious error with legal implications, it is more dreaded than a puzzle mistake – but not much.

Crossword Puzzle people, and Jumble people, and Word Sleuth people are serious about their stuff. They pay attention to what’s going on, are very detail oriented, and though generally nice about it – don’t let us get away with a mistake without telling us about it. I’ve had more than one reader tell me they work such puzzles to keep their minds sharp and after speaking with them, I absolutely believe their technique is working.

There’s not much worse than walking into my office on a Monday morning encountering a lit-up telephone stacked with messages about a Crossword Puzzle error. Our Saturday paper incorrectly duplicated the Friday puzzle.

To fully correct the error would have required running the answer to the Friday puzzle, running the actual Saturday puzzle and the answers to the Saturday puzzle – along with the regular Tuesday puzzle and answers to the Monday puzzle.

With news space at a premium, we made the decision to run the answers to the Friday puzzle and just to start fresh Tuesday.

We’re back on schedule now, and doing our best not to make such mistakes that inconvenience our readers and flood our telephone lines.

Changes, the sequel, now on opinions page

If it’s Tuesday, it must be time for another change, or at least continued evolution of a new look and new content for The Enterprise. Starting tomorrow the Opinions page – pages on Sunday – will not only take on a new look, but will make moves toward becoming more reader interactive.

Though readers have, for some time, been able to submit letters to the editor via BeaumontEnterprise.com, they now also will have the opportunity to post comments on editorials and columns on the Web page. Plans call for some of those on-line comments to eventually make their way into the print version as well, intertwining the two Enterprise products even more.

Readers also will see more pro and con writing, offering arguments on both sides of important issues.

The editor, will, on occasion, solicit brief comments or “Snap judgments” from someone in the community on a topic. And at least once a week, we’ll be asking readers a question that we expect to fuel strong opinions on both sides.

It’s all part of a plan to do more than speak to our readers and instead engage them in a conversation. We’re hoping you’ll take the time to speak up and let us know what you think about the changes – and the opinions.

See and Be SEEN @BeaumontEnterprise.com/seen

Pictures of smiling, happy, people having a great time can’t help but be a bit contagious. So, Enterprise reporters are trying to spread the joy by making sure the BeaumontEnterprise.com Web site has its share of fun pictures.

The relatively new “Be SEEN” feature on the site offers photo galleries of locals having a good time at a club, party, social event or gathering every week.

Readers can check for familiar faces or even click a link to offer suggestions for an event that deserves to be documented.

Check it out. And don’t forget to SMILE.

Being chic has nothing to do with sheiks

We hate errors – any errors. Stupid errors are among the worst. We really hate mistakes about things we know, yet we still just get wrong. But the absolute worst are errors we’ve caught that still manage to make it into the paper.

We have one of those in today’s paper, on page 1B, the new BE section. It contains an article that enumerates seven beauty tips that might surprise you. What might surprise you most is No. 6, where we offer you a way to look “sheik” on the cheap.

The biggest surprise might be that the sheik look comes with neither your own oil well, luxury car nor harem because what we really wanted was for you to look chic – a word that sounds the same, but has a completely different meaning.

The author of the story knows the difference – we won’t even make any jokes about her being a Texas A&M graduate – she just made a mistake. It’s a little trick those of us who routinely compose at the typewriter encounter: Sometimes your brain just tells your fingers to type a word that sounds the same because you are writing so fast you don’t stop to think about each word.

But we caught the mistake. Seriously. Days ago.

Because of the section redesign that launched Tuesday, those pages were created farther in advance than usual, so the error was caught and corrected. Then yesterday, the editor responsible for the redesign even followed up, going to extreme measures to make sure the corrected version of the story made it into print.

It didn’t. We’re still not sure why.

We just know it doesn’t make us feel very chic.

Making a change with more on the way

I’ve written before about the need for businesses to change and grow and the fact that it is the nature of a newspaper to continually change. A lack of change causes stagnation and such stagnation doesn’t blend well with the concept of current news.

So, we’ve got more changes coming.

Some readers might have noticed that we changed a few things on page 2A of The Enterprise already, and, that our byline style also changed recently. This week the features section will undergo more drastic changes, both in content and style.

Readers will still find their favorite content in the section – along with much more. And the section is taking on a name change. No longer will it be the now familiar Here & Now; Friends & Family; Body & Mind; Life & Style; Weekend & Beyond or Faith & Values. Instead the features section becomes BE, inviting readers to BE inspired, energized or even accessorized.

Before that sends you into a blind panic, recognize that renaming feature sections has been a routine thing for decades. In the not quite 30 years I’ve worked here we’ve gone from Family Living to Living, to Lifestyles to I don’t remember what before becoming the “&” themed pages about three or four years ago. So, it’s time.

Just recognize that the content of the section is much more important than its name.

This new section will offer a print version of some content that previously has been available only on line. On Tuesdays, Monique Batson, a mother of four, will let readers know what’s going on at The Mom Spot; Wednesdays Matthew Danelo will whet readers’ appetites with his take on local cuisine and dining venues; Thursdays, living healthy will get a little easier with health questions and answers from area physicians and inspiring athletes; Fridays, sink your teeth into biting satire with Gator’s view from The Bayou; Saturdays Ashley Sanders be your guide to trendy shopping on a budget; and Sundays, Jane McBride will continue to lift your spirits and open your mind with her musings on life.

The photographs of some of the inside columnists . . . Dear Abby, Heloise and Dr. Donohue, will be disappearing from the page giving readers three more inches of information rather than photos of three people that just take up space.

So, get ready and get excited about what’s new in the features section. It’s only the beginning of positive updates readers can expect in The Enterprise in the weeks to come.

Demand surges for history-making papers

Our country made history this week by electing our first African-American president. Just as is the case for other momentous events in the history of our planet, newspapers documenting Barack Obama’s election have been in high demand.

Customers bought between 2,000 and 3,000 additional copies of the Wednesday, Nov. 5 edition of The Enterprise from racks in Southeast Texas and the demand for Thursday’s paper also was higher than normal.

Other newspapers, such as the Houston Chronicle, actually ran additional copies of their publication to meet public demand.

As a long-time journalist, I’ve seen copies, framed and unframed of front pages reflecting frozen moments of history: the bombing of Pearl Harbor; the end of WWII; the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the break-up of the shuttle Columbia in 2003. This time it’s nice to know we’ve made history with some good news, worth celebrating and worth saving to share with our children and grandchildren.

In more President-elect Obama news, two readers called to complain about that historic Wednesday front page. One objected to a headline that said, “Obama becomes first African-American president,” saying the word president should have been capitalized. She hinted that the lowercase president showed a lack of respect. Actually what the lowercase president shows is AP (Associated Press) style. The Enterprise uses what is called “down-style” headlines, which means only the first word and words ordinarily capitalized, start with capital letters. All others start with lowercase letters. President is capitalized only at the beginning of the headline (or sentence) or when preceding a name, as in a title. President-elect Obama is correct as is Obama, president-elect.

A second reader called to complain that the front page contained equal-size photographs of Obama and McCain alongside their vote totals at the top of the page. Even though there was a larger photo of the entire Obama family below that, it didn’t matter. According to that reader the whole front page should have been a photograph of Obama. We could easily concede that the front page photo of the family could have been cropped a bit tighter and enlarged a bit, but the page design and photo selection was the product of tight deadlines, not a purposeful slight as the caller implied.

When I saw the front page, personally, it made me smile to see such a lovely family celebrating such a wonderful victory. And it struck me that they were wearing red, symbolically the Republican color, which I would like to think represents the need for setting aside formerly observed artificially drawn lines and moving forward in unity – one country, one leader, and one historic moment.