On Wednesday, the front page of the Hamilton (Ohio) Journal-News was pretty much a skeleton. At least, that’s how it looks on Newseum’s collection of front pages.
“Thankfully, that’s not the case,” Kevin Aldridge, editor of the Journal-News, told Poynter.
Aldridge hadn’t seen Newseum’s version of the front when Poynter called, but here it is.
“Our front page looks normal today,” Aldridge said. “There’s no dummy or no mockup. It came out OK.”
Jonathan Thompson, senior manager of media relations at Newseum, told Poynter that most newspapers send their front pages automatically.
“I know occasionally a dummy front or a special wrap is sent in by mistake and we generally try to remove those when we find them or if the paper contacts us to request that we take it down,” he said.
Sharon Shahid, online managing editor at Newseum, told Poynter that Newseum deals with about 1,000 front pages a day. She remembers only one other time when a dummy page made it through.
“At first I didn’t know what to do with it,” she said.
She thought about using it in the Top 10 roundup for the day as a way to show students how newspapers get put together, but eventually decided not to and took it down. That’s what Newseum was doing with the Journal-News’ page this morning, too.
“We’re taking it out of the collection right now.”
Alridge called back later Wednesday morning and said the newspaper is looking into their process for sending the front to Newseum “to make sure that we send them the final version of our front page,” he said.
The issue seemed to be caused by an automated system sending the front.
“But again, thankfully that wasn’t the one that went out to our audiences and our subscribers.”
