We stopped what we were doing on Tuesday, November 30, even though
we were in the final harried days of getting the winter issue
done. Word had come down that Tyrone Willingham, after three seasons
as head football coach, was being fired. The press conference
was being carried live on local TV, so we turned on the little
set in our office and watched.
There are benefits to doing a quarterly publication, but timing
can be a problem. We had three days to get the issue packed off
to the printer; a month would pass before our readers would receive
the issue in the mail. By then the Willingham story would be old
news.
Of course, the Willingham story blew up in the press and became
a story we had to do. It got even bigger when the University president,
Father Monk Malloy, CSC, criticized
the decision. He was our winter cover story -- a cover story that
would have no mention of the latest, and perhaps most controversial,
episode of his presidency. We were bummed, but our production
schedule prevented us from doing justice to the whole complicated
affair.
As expected, we heard
from readers -- some wanting to express their opinions on the
coaching situation and others criticizing us for omitting the
incident in our winter issue. But we don't carry letters unless
they refer to articles in the previous issue, and we couldn't
turn the story around so quickly.
As a quarterly, we
can't handle some subjects with the timeliness of other media.
We can, however, take the longer view and put our unique signature
on those stories or set them in a context not possible in the
immediate surroundings of breaking news. This story was particularly
tricky because it dealt with sensitive issues, ones which had
ignited a media storm and caused heated disagreement within the
family. We tried to cover the story in a manner appropriate to
the editorial positioning of this magazine. It's in this issue
-- another edition of the magazine in which timing proved yet
again to be a challenge.
We first approached
George Weigel, a prominent biographer of the pope and an authority
on Church affairs, last October about doing a piece outlining
the promise and problems that would confront the Church in the
days after Pope John Paul II has passed away.
We got the article
in January, saw immediately that it had cover weight, took it
through the editing process (always a collaboration of writer
and editor) and had it moving into page proofs, with art and headlines,
for a March 3 deadline for printing. In February the pope fell
ill and was hospitalized. While much of the article would stand
well over time, the first few pages would need to be rewritten
if John Paul II passed away prior to publication. We broached
the subject with the author, who informed us that, should the
pope die, he would leave the next day with an NBC film crew to
be their voice in Rome. He would not have time for us.
As I write this, I have just finished the football feature and
we have less than three weeks until the magazine goes to press.
The pope seems to be doing better, Charlie Weis is now on campus,
and we're all hoping for the best.
[Editor's note: As should be clear, this
essay for the spring print issue was written before the death
of Pope John Paul II.]
(April 1, 2005)
