Fire in the Black Forest

About a year ago, I wrote a column recounting a conversation with my brother Jim Egolf about evacuations in case of forest fire. We compared notes about my experiences being evacuated during the French Creek forest fire two months earlier and his concerns watching the Waldo Canyon wildfires raging across town from his home in Colorado Springs.
"It's not this fire we're worried about," he said at the time. "It's fear of where the next one breaks out."
Colorado was like a tinderbox because of extreme drought conditions, he said. One spark could set off fire that would consume the side of the city where he resides.
Tragically, that prescient observation is what happened last Tuesday afternoon.
A fire of unknown origin started in the Black Forest on the north side of Colorado Springs, spreading quickly to destroy 14,198 acres, 485 homes and claim two lives.
My brother and sister-in-law JoAnne lost their home and all their belongings.
They evacuated their home on Swan Road near Black Forest Road at 5:03 p.m. Mountain Time on Tuesday, the order coming as an emergency, not an alert. The fire was spreading so quickly that there was not enough time to utilize the reverse-911 call system in place to alert residents.
Instead, they were ordered to leave immediately as sheriff's officials went through the neighborhood, flames already visible moving quickly through the forest to the south of them.
Jim and JoAnne got out safely, took Cap the dog to a friend's, and went to a hotel, joined for meals by their son who was visiting from California and their daughter's family, who live in Aurora.
And they waited, like more than a thousand others evacuated, for word.
Meanwhile, photos and videos of the spreading fire showed a mind-numbing path of destruction -- homes lit with flames, timber crackling like a bonfire, the broad expanse of Colorado's sky filled with black smoke.

At 5 p.m. MT Wednesday the El Paso Sheriff's office activated a website with a list of properties assessed as "total loss," "partial damage" and "appears unaffected."
Colleagues at The Denver Post city desk sent me the link by email soon after it went live. Jim and JoAnne's address on Swan Road was in the "appears unaffected" column.
Relief! I called him, interrupting a pizza dinner with his kids and three grandchildren. Emotions were running high.
But as the hours continued, he was worried. Jim and his son Jeff were spending time on the computer scanning the aerial photos posted online. They zoomed in on the location of what they believed was their home. They saw brick walls and piles of ash and rubble.

The picture conflicted with the data on the sheriff's department list, but that was not unusual, according to news reports. Much of the burned area was like a war zone, impossible to identify exact addresses of properties. As crews were able to clarify, homes originally listed untouched were being reclassified as destroyed.
I called Jim Friday night to talk about this discrepancy and found him at a practice for a softball team he coaches. A respected catcher back in the day for Boyertown Legion, Ursinus College, and the Gabelsville Owls, he decided after retiring from careers in the Air Force and at Lockheed-Martin to coach a Special Olympics team.
He had no time to talk when I called, no time to dwell on his misfortune because he was handing out team shirts for the season to his team of special needs kids. The question "why do bad things happen to good people?" came to mind.
Later that night, Jim emailed to say he was pretty certain the photos were accurate, despite the list.
"It looks like after 42 years JoAnne and I are starting out with nothing again. But we have family, friends, faith and hope. The material things are not that important," he wrote.
Early Saturday morning, I saw the list had changed overnight. His address went from green to red, as did the properties throughout his neighborhood.
When I talked to Jim that morning, he told me a humorous story about my Dad's tractor that he had hauled by trailer to Colorado from Pennsylvania some years ago. He said his son mentioned they could have tried driving it out of there to save and what a peculiar sight that would have been.
He said they were preparing to start a search for long-term rental housing and would be waiting some days before they could get back in to the Black Forest area to see if anything could be salvaged.
They're not alone. They're one of some 480 families dealing with loss in this fire, now the worst wildfire in Colorado history.
My brother makes a point of ending calls and emails on a positive note, despite everything. So I'll follow his example in this column:
This story about loss is also about strength and character. This is about faith and hope and courage, qualities my brother and sister-in-law have in abundance.
This is a story about people who coach a team of challenged children while waiting for news that they've lost everything.
Keep a good thought for them and all Colorado's fire victims as those qualities are tested in the weeks and months ahead while they work, putting their lives back together.

An apology

We are human; we make mistakes.
In the news business, those mistakes when printed are in front of the public's eye. They can embarrass, enrage or inflame a part of our community, which is never our intention.
We're embarrassed and often pretty angry with ourselves, too, when a careless error gets into print.
As editor, I am the first and last stop on the complaint chain regarding errors. The two-part question I get most often is: "What's wrong with you people? Did you ever hear of proofreaders?"
The answer to that is a) we're human, and b) proofreading as a single job title went out with hot type, which was a change in our industry 40-some years ago. We do "proof" our pages, but the editors who do that are juggling other work at the same time, and they may not catch every mistake on a page.
That is not a good excuse, but it's reality. Editors proofing pages are as human as the people who misspelled a word in the first place.
After a glaring error, readers often demand "a retraction." A retraction, or taking back a mistake, is impossible in print. More than anyone, we at The Mercury wish we could take back mistakes as if they never happened. But print is unforgiving.
Then, there are the "mistakes" people complain about  which are not our errors. It is not a mistake that we printed a shoplifting arrest or a DUI charge, even if it is embarrassing and may cause personal repercussions. I tell those callers that we print the police reports provided as public information, and if the disposition of the case proves the person innocent, we'll report that as well.
We also are sometimes accused for including too much detail in a story, or for using bad taste in story, headline or photo judgment. These are not as clear cut as spelling errors or public information.
The guidance on judgment is whether it is defensible. If there is a reason, such as consistent treatment of information, the public right to know or a higher level of importance to presenting information for which we may be criticized, publish.  If there is no good reason for something questionable, don't publish.
Recently, The Mercury published a headline on the front page that violated all the above criteria. The headline was a play on words on Hill School commencement speaker Oliver Stone that in its writing was thought to be clever. In its reading, it trivialized the accomplishments of the Hill class.
The day the headline appeared, I wrote an apology on behalf of The Mercury to Hill School headmaster Zachary Lehman. In part, it read:

"The headline in question was not representative of The Mercury's standards of journalism or view of The Hill School. We value your institution’s role in our community as a global institution of learning and respect your students and faculty leaders for your part in that role. ... We support your work in educating future leaders and trust that you support ours in promoting that education to the community."

Everyone involved, including me and the writer of this headline, sincerely regrets the publication of what was an ill-conceived attempt to be clever. We apologize to the entire Hill community, past and present, for its publication. 

Retractions aren't possible. We have to settle for lessons learned.

The balancing act

This was written as a guest post for Steve Buttry and also appears here:

I have a saying honed during 37 years in the news business: "Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow."
That may sound like encouragement to procrastinate or an excuse for laziness, but it's not. Put it in context of our work: We  build a product from start to finish in a day's time -- every day -- and with so much emphasis on what we have daily, we have to also know what we can set aside until tomorrow.
Consider the emails, the requests, the columns to write, stories to edit, projects to manage ... it doesn't end, diminish or slow down. So my thinking is that if something's not needed today, leave it for tomorrow.

This blog in its early days was called The Daily Overload because I was writing about the digital transformation in the news business and the daunting number of tasks involved.
I changed the name at some point because I didn't want to dwell on the overload; that in itself makes me tired.
Today's news comes at us at such a rapid pace that no matter how fast we run we can't get ahead of it. The risk is that we become like hamsters on a wheel.
In that environment, we need to give ourselves a break now and then and strive for balance. Being good editors -- smart editors -- comes from enjoying other endeavors in life, too. 
The ability to put work aside is a chore in itself requiring discipline and a daily commitment to find balance.

A few thoughts on how to do that:

• Pay yourself first. This is a truism of financial management that can be adopted to time management as well. Do something for yourself first thing in the day before you start working. Once you get into the newsroom, the beast takes over. For years, I went for a 3- to 5-mile run in my neighborhood after getting the kids off to school and before I came into the office. These days, I bike to work. On days I don't ride, I do yoga at home. I pay myself first with an exercise investment before I feed the hungry news beast. The day starts better.
• Use deadlines to your advantage.  This advice from my friend Michelle Karas, editor of The Bennington Banner: Join a fitness class or a book group that meets a specific time. If you commit to being in class at 7, you have a deadline to leave work at 6:45. Gets better results than vowing to "go to the gym after work."
• Keep everything in its place. When at home, put the laptop away and spend time with the people in your life, a good book, a movie, or cooking dinner -- something to be enjoyed. Show with your actions that life outside the newsroom matters. When in the newsroom, don't let demands from your personal life consume your time. Instead of promoting balance, the interruptions can add to the overload.
• Make time for joy. "Joy" may be listening to music. Or brewing a batch of beer. Or a walk in the woods. Whatever it is, make it a point every day, or as near to that as possible. Find the balance between the awesome responsibility of being an editor and the lighter side of life.
• When the adrenaline hits, run with it. On days when a big news story happens, the above words of wisdom go out the window. As editors, our job remains the director of the band when it comes to delivering news to our communities. Those days, everything else takes a backseat. Just run with it. Get back to balance the next day.

Balance isn't putting in the background the important work of being editors. It is, however, remembering that without health and emotional well-being, mental and physical energy suffers.
Achieving balance helps us become better, more productive editors. 

News doesn't sleep

A little after midnight Friday morning, slot desk editor Jim Wright was making a final check of Associated Press  headlines to update The Mercury’s website when he saw a brief story that a police officer at MIT near Boston had been shot. He posted the story to our website, too late to make the print editions.
About the same time, reporter Frank Otto was getting home to West Chester after working late covering the evening’s Phoenixville Area School Board meeting and stopping at the McDonald’s drive-through to pick up dinner. As he ate, he scanned Twitter on his phone, noticing some posts about a police shooting and some grenades or bombs being part of a shootout.
In Conshohocken, assistant sports editor Steve Moore was off for the night and had returned home after going to a Phillies game with his wife and young son. A Boston University alum, Moore was checking for news on TV out of his adopted home city around midnight when he saw some footage from Watertown, Mass.
And then headlines started to roll.
“I saw on Twitter something about two people were armed with grenades, so I searched and started listening to the Boston police scanner,” recalled Otto. “There was a lot of talk about gunfire. About then, I started fully listening.
“A friend from Wisconsin going in to law enforcement was listening too, and we were talking back and forth. It was like listening to a baseball game.
“At one point, they talked about the ‘suspect on the ground,’ and an officer said, ‘This may be a stupid question, but do you think we should turn off our phones?’”
Moore’s focus was on the people of Watertown more than the police. “I have friends who live in Watertown and a friend who works at MIT. My first reaction was to check on Facebook and Twitter and make sure they were OK,” he said.
About that time, Otto and Moore noticed each other’s tweets and starting “talking” through direct messages and email. “Steve helped me out because I couldn’t remember The Mercury’s Twitter password,” recalled Otto. “I figured I might as well start posting some stuff to the website, too,” said Moore.
“Frank and I decided on what to tweet and retweet,” said Moore. “The Boston Globe and The Associated Press are trusted sources; anything else, use caution.  We’re not trying to break anything,” Moore said. “We just thought, ‘Hey maybe if somebody wakes up and has no idea what happened, at least they will know what’s going on.”
From 1:30 to 4:30 a.m., Moore updated the top story on The Mercury website six or seven times. The final version at 4:38 a.m. reported that one of the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings was dead after a police shootout and the second was on the run, a massive manhunt under way.
During the same time frame and continuing until about 7:30 a.m., Otto posted @MercuryX, unfolding the story for our readers from news accounts, the police scanner, and other reporting sources.
“It kinda rolls out like a mosaic — you have to sort through it all, and you need context,” Otto said.
Responsibility and accuracy are critical.
“I stayed away from specific addresses or anything that might hurt what was going on,” Otto said.
Both Otto and Moore were careful to avoid rumor and unattributed information. “We’re all about confirming,” Otto said. He sought out known reliable sources, including a reporter on the scene for Digital First Media, The Mercury’s parent company.
The tweets provided both witness and reporting information:
“Just had presser w/Col Alben of MSP — confirmed one suspect one loose — another briefing in an hour.”
“State Police to Greater Boston — basically stay home today. Especially you, Watertown, where no traffic can go in/out.”
 “Police, still searching, to each other: ‘Make sure we’re identifying each other and avoiding crossfire situations.’”
The story went on for about 60 tweets, some with photos, and a half-dozen stories, gathered and published in the middle of the night by two Mercury staffers while most of the region’s readers slept.
It was breaking news in every sense, delivered from the streets where it was unfolding in Watertown, Mass., to the phone by your bedside or the laptop on your desk.
Otto said sometime early Friday morning he noticed one guy on Twitter posted a proclamation, “Traditional media is dead.” 
The same person spent the night following and retweeting reporters. These two Mercury reporters proved we’re not dead.
We’re not even sleeping.

A quieter newsroom without Don Seeley

The Mercury newsroom is noticeably quieter these days. First, there was the departure of our effervescent reporter Brandie Kessler, who took a job as a general assignment and special projects reporter at the York Daily Record.
Then, business editor Michelle Karas left us, taking her witty intellect and friendly demeanor with her on a move to Vermont to become editor of The Bennington Banner.
But the departure that has most noticeably widened a chasm of quiet in the newsroom is that of Don Seeley, who has left the full-time position of sports editor while continuing as a columnist and sports writer for The Mercury.
Don's words haven't left our pages and sites, but his humor is absent from our newsroom.
And for anyone who knows Don, that's a big absence.
I first met Don when he started here 32 years ago. Unlike those who have heard all his stories in the past tense, I was in the newsroom as his exploits and antics were occurring.
News not necessarily fit for print, we heard about the road trips as a baseball writer to Boyertown American Legion World Series in far-flung places like Fargo, N.D.; Rapid City, S.D.; and Stevens Point, Wis., and about after-hours exploits and what he had for dinner and how it was affecting him.
His personal habits in the newsroom were a source of constant jokes. One former employee kept a gas mask in his desk drawer and used it whenever Don was sitting near him.
Although I have certainly endured the moans, groans and expletives about his habits -- I even had to put a warning letter in his file once when a co-worker lodged a formal complaint -- I confess I have never been personally offended by Don in all the years I've known him.
His reputation for sexual innuendo is well documented, but he has never said or done anything to offend me. Ever. And that counts for years before 1998, when shortly after being named editor, I promoted him to sports editor.
Don likes to say I asked him to be sports editor, but he never accepted. My version of that story is that he told me he'd probably get fired if he took the job because he speaks his mind and "corporate" might not always like what he had to say. I told him that honesty would never cost him his job.
He also said he didn't think he would make a good sports editor, using that same line of logic that he wasn't a boss's boss.
I told him he was my choice because I put readers first. Then, and now, no one is more respected and loved among our readers than Don Seeley. His words, both in the stories and columns he writes and when he speaks to groups, touch people's hearts.
He covers sports with an obsession for stats and accuracy, an eye for personality and an intuitive ability to discover the inspiration inside the story. That makes him a reader's choice, and thus, my choice.
The lowest point in our relationship came in 2005 when Don was diagnosed with stage-four neck cancer. The next eight  months were emotionally difficult for all who knew him. The aggressive treatments nearly killed him, more than once.
Radiation robbed him of his voice and his ability to swallow.  I made an effort to call him every day to let him know the newsroom was in his corner in this fight. Some days he could whisper; some days only murmur acknowledgement that he appreciated the check-in.
He was hospitalized with a feeding tube infection, then back home where he watched the Food Channel incessantly because looking at food was the only way he had to enjoy it.  Toward the end of that long summer, his voice was back but he still couldn't eat solid foods.
My husband and I were hosting a picnic at our house around that time for a retiring co-worker. Don was there with his then-girlfriend, now wife, Kathy, and all he could eat was fresh mozzarella and olive oil while the rest of us had filet and potatoes. Nonetheless, he joked, entertained, reminisced, and was the life of the party.
That night reminded me of how quickly he could make people smile, and of how, even in the worst times for him personally, he was our newsroom narrator and clown.
Don has been cancer-free seven and a half years, and his "retirement" now is not motivated by the recurrence of disease. Rather, it's a chance to do more of what he loves best -- write, play golf, spend time with Kathy, his beloved daughters and grandson and friends.
You, the readers, are lucky. You still have his presence loud and clear in his coverage of high school sports and the stories that only he can find.
But here in the newsroom, it's quieter.  We  miss him.

Series offers grim reminder to parents: This could be me

In the years I've been in the news business, I've edited stories about crime and tragedy involving young people, sometimes thinking, "Not my child. This could never be me ..."
One of the hardest parts of editing our series, "Fatal Addiction," is the awful truth that this could be me.
Or my child.
Or anyone I know.
***
The path to addiction recounted by the people interviewed in this series often began with painkillers prescribed by a doctor for an injury or anxiety.
What parent of a teenager hasn't made a fair share of doctor or emergency room visits, stopping at a pharmacy on the way home, per the doctor's orders?
"When our kids are hurt or sick, we tell them to take their medicine," said Coleen Watchorn in the interviews conducted for this series. "We're doing what we think we're supposed to do as parents."
That medicine can become habit-forming, or it can lead to friends or other family using the leftover prescribed pills to experiment. Addiction comes later.
Coleen and her friend Kathy Mackie shared their stories with us as parents who watched their sons fight and lose their battles with addiction.
These mothers spoke to us knowing that some people might judge them poorly. But they were  adamant that they wanted to speak out and help others who may be going through a similar experience.
They sought a greater good from their grief -- a mission to discuss heroin publicly, to confront the reality that opioids are a threat to all our children.
Their courage to be candid has been inspiring for all of us involved in this series.
In my case, their stories have touched close to home. 
***
My younger son was an active, athletic, risk-taking child from the time he could walk. Through middle school and high school, when sports became his passion, those trips to the doctor and emergency room were frequent.
Doctors prescribed pills for sports anxiety, pills for better concentration, pills for pain, pills for every ailment encountered.
Add the social pressure of peers, and the threat of abuse is obvious.

Reading these stories, I was frequently struck by a stark reality: "This could have been my child."
***
Trying to understand how heroin addiction can invade a family and rob a fine young man of his future and parents of their child was the most difficult part of editing this series, particularly because I know one of the families.
I attend church with the Mackies. Kathy and I were confirmed in the same class as teens and served on consistory together as adults. My husband and I chose Bob Mackie as confirmation mentor for our oldest son.
This series is about people we know who live good lives and who did everything right as parents -- and then suffered a loss no parent should have to bear.
This could be any of us; this could be our children.
Pills and heroin are a real threat in our towns. The goal of this series was to bring that truth into the open and prevent more lives from being lost.

Your newspaper? Now, it's your multi-platform news source

As the news business changes and evolves from print to web to mobile publishing, we are changing, too.
One of the changes in recent years has been opening our doors to the public and sharing with readers the insights and analysis of our own work.
That's a two-way street. We also now solicit feedback on issues of interest on Facebook and in other ways to bring the voices of the audience into our reporting.
We've come a long way from "call 323-3000 with your news tips" to "like us on Facebook."
As we continue on that path, we want to share more of the work that goes on behind the scenes in reporting and editing the stories of your community.
Beginning Monday, we're going to make available our reporters to answer questions about the story behind a photo, or the background of a story or the thinking behind an editorial opinion.
You can ask the SoundOff editor why a comment wasn't used or the Opinion page editor how to get a letter printed.
You can ask a reporter how they learned that a car was in the creek or a photographer how he got that amazing sports action photo.
Although we accept criticism, we want this to be more than a gripe session. We hope to let you, as our loyal readers, see what goes on behind the scenes in our reporting. We want to turn back the curtain, so to speak, particularly on the evolution in our industry that is pushing us daily toward new frontiers.  
We'll take questions via Facebook, Twitter, email, Google+, or our website, and we'll answer via  video posted on our website and Facebook.
Our plan is to expand the answer sessions into conversations through Google hangouts or Skype.

We also are making some changes in our Community Media Lab, which is currently open to the public during certain hours every day.
The Community Media Lab is a resource we make available to the public for small group meetings, free Wifi, use of three computer labs for blogging or research and a newspaper archives to view past issues of The Mercury going back to 1931.
Instead of limited hours, we are now making the lab available to the public when you need it. To use our lab for research or for a small group meeting, call and schedule a time, or stop in at our front desk.
In addition, we will be open for anyone to walk in one day a week, every Wednesday, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Just stop by, and our computers and our resources will be available for your use.


Diane Hoffman, community engagement editor, will be happy to assist you in using our archives or arranging a time for a meeting. You can also meet with Diane about how to start a blog or what you can do to get news of your group's events published on any of the platforms we offer, including the newspaper.
We have a library of books you can borrow, for free, and coffee for $1. It's a good space to come in out of the cold.
We want the Community Media Lab to be a resource for Pottstown and the surrounding area to use as a way to interact with us.
Your newspaper is now your website, your Facebook page, your Twitter feed, and your source of breaking news on your phone or tablet.
Times are changing, but what hasn't changed is our commitment to you, our audience.
Keep in touch.