Each day, the staff of the Daily News tries to have a package story prepared to fill the main news hole on page one. (That would be the big story in the middle of the front page.) We have planning meetings once a week, along with other smaller group meetings to coordinate these large, usually more in-depth, stories.
The package for Wednesday’s paper was supposed to be an informational graphic about tornadoes. We felt this was approriate because tornado season just started, and Indiana is in what some call Tornado Alley.
However, when we sat down in Editorial Board Tuesday night, with snow covering campus, we had to reconsider our package. Snow doesn’t exactly convey the idea of a tornado, so running a package on torandoes was not as timely or newsworthy as we had hoped.
We decided to hold the tornado package to run on another day, and instead we decided to package our story on the expansion of the Ball State recreational center. This story had a lot of information and interesting to students. The rec center addition has also been a major issue on campus and in Student Government Association.
Overall, our decision to package the rec center was probably a smarter move than trying to run something about tornadoes when it was snowing outside.
Submitted by Emily Ortman, news editor, and Brandon Stuck, assistant design editor