'Faith in Sumter' with change to a morning edition
This column was published ahead of the first Monday morning edition of The Item, which was April 1, 2002.
For all of my career at The Item, which spans some 50 years (I started young, in the summers as a "printer's devil"), this newspaper has been published in the afternoon on weekdays. It was not until 1987 that we went to Saturday and Sunday morning editions. It was always drummed into my head by crusty newspaper veterans that it took real men and real women to put out an afternoon newspaper.
You start early in the morning and (hopefully) go to press early. The time frame is short; you've got to move fast; readers want their papers before dark. As for morning editions, it seemed like child's play to my way of thinking. You've got all day and most of the night to put out a newspaper. No sweat.
But it's not that simple, as I've discovered in the run-up to Monday, when The Item becomes a full-fledged a.m. For example, sports events - such as the University of South Carolina Gamecocks playing in the National Invitation Tournament in New York on Tuesday, a late-night game that didn't end until after 11 p.m. - can create deadline pressures. Since we're starting out with a midnight deadline, there was not enough time to run a complete story on the game had we been a morning publication this week. Therefore, the only solution was replating.
What that means is this: You start the presses on time with either a short story or a bulletin noting the Gamecocks had won along with the score (assuming the game is over by then), then you await a detailed Associated Press story on the game. After it moves, the sports editor reworks the page, sends it to camera and platemaking, and when the replated page is ready, the press operator stops the run and replaces the early plate with the new one. Gamecock and sports fans expect a complete story on such games. We'll do so for most readers, although those subscribers who receive the early run are more likely to read the abbreviated version. City residents and newsrack patrons will see the complete story. We'll go through the same series of events on Monday night for the National Collegiate Athletic Association title game.
And then there are those meetings of public bodies, such as city and county council and school boards. Those occur in the evening. The reporter has to move fast if a full and timely account of the meetings, especially if they run long, is to be provided to our readers. So it's not as simple as I initially thought, and maybe it won't always be a piece of cake. But we'll get it done, and done well, because we've got the staffers capable of making the transition from afternoon to morning publication and eager to prove to readers why they won more awards (27) in the South Carolina Press Association news contest this year than any other newspaper in our circulation category.
Speaking of the staff, I should note that everyone who works for The Item in various capacities - circulation, advertising, composing, press, distribution, mailroom and business office - has an important role to play in producing a quality morning newspaper, and those folks are also excited about meeting the challenge of this conversion. Plus we have a fine group of carriers - independent contractors - who will be focused on on-time home delivery. When we polled our staffers about changing from afternoon to morning, they were not only unanimous in their support, but also enthusiastic about the changeover and overcoming any challenges it presents. As for our readers and advertisers, surveys in recent years showed an overwhelming majority preferred a morning publication. They've spoken; we've listened.
Reading habits have changed over the years, with readers having less time between delivery in the afternoon and their many evening activities. A morning newspaper expands this "window" to 10-12 hours versus the typical p.m. window of four to five hours. Some readers have told me they are going to find it hard adjusting to morning delivery (if they're subscribers) when they've been used to seeing The Item in their yards in the afternoon. I tell them to either leave it in the yard until the afternoon or pick it up early and hold it for reading in the evening hours. I'm a creature of habit also. I've gotten settled into the routine of coming in early in the morning and leaving late in the afternoon. Now the late afternoon is when the real work will begin on creating a morning edition. One must make adjustments.
For inspiration, I dug up the increasingly brittle first edition of The Daily Item, as it was initially named by its founder and my grandfather, Hubert Graham Osteen, on Oct. 15, 1894. It was a modest sheet of four pages, 10 inches by 13 inches. A lot of locals thought he was nuts to try to start a daily newspaper at a time when the country was in the midst of a depression and Sumter wasn't exactly swimming in prosperity. He had some apprehension as well, noting in an editorial that the establishment of a daily paper in Sumter "is an enterprise yet untried and there were no past experiences upon which to base calculations." But he hastened to add, "With the continued growth and prosperity of Sumter as the prime object, The Daily Item has faith in Sumter and will prove this faith by works."
Now, just as then, we are undertaking "an enterprise yet untried" in converting to a weekday morning publication, but we, too, have "faith in Sumter and will prove this faith by works." We also have faith in reader acceptance, wherever The Item is delivered - Sumter, Lee or Clarendon counties. Today is the final afternoon edition of The Item. I'd be less than honest if I didn't say I'll miss it - for awhile. But I'd like to think of the conversion this way: It's not like I'm saying farewell to an old friend but simply goodbye until I see you in the morning. The friend is always around; it's just that he's stopping by earlier. See you then.