Lost in Tuesday's aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing the day before was the six-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre, where a gunman killed 32 people in a two-hour rampage.
It was also the six-year anniversary of the Prince George Cougars upsetting the Everett Silvertips four games to two, qualifying for the Western Conference finals against the Vancouver Giants.
As the copy of the April 17, 2007 Citizen front page shows, we tried to have it both ways. And, boy did we hear about it.
For hockey and Cougars fan, their moment of triumph was marred by Virginia Tech. Furthermore, they argued, aren't you the Prince George Citizen? Virginia Tech is important but it belongs inside the paper, on a world news page. Prince George is celebrating its junior hockey team, not mourning people they don't know in a place they've never been.
On the other hand, local residents called to angrily complain that we had trivialized a tragedy by highlighting the results of a meaningless hockey game.
Classic case of trying to please everyone and pleasing no one.
A similar reaction from Prince George residents greeted our front page on Tuesday. Except for a headline at the top of the page - 'Local marathoners safe' - we had nothing on the Boston Marathon tragedy, throwing readers all the way back to page 19, where our local story led a full page of coverage. Our front page was instead devoted to a portrait photo of NDP leader Adrian Dix, with stories inside from our exclusive 45-minute interview with him Monday.
We devoted so much space to Dix out of fairness. We gave similar space to Christy Clark (including the front-page portrait) when she had also sat down with The Citizen for an exclusive interview 10 days earlier.
We recognized that the Boston Marathon bombing was significant. Sports reporter Sheri Lamb was quickly in contact with two of the three local competitors and their observations led our coverage of the bombing. On any other day, Lamb's story would have been on the top of the front page, with the Associated Press coverage beside it.
Citizen readers shouldn't have to go all the way to page 19 to read about such a significant news event. Each day, we divide the paper into section for provincial, national and world news. While this system works most days, it failed with our coverage on Tuesday.
Journalism has been called history on the run and when you run every day, some days you're bound to trip.
Lesson learned.
