Headlines past deadline: Sago Mine disaster
A week of front pages and how editors explained their coverage to readers.

Before and after front pages
Here you'll find a rich resource of information on how newspapers covered the tragedy in Sago, W.Va. The folder includes two PowerPoints that showcase the front pages of more than 100 newspapers across eight days. The PowerPoints (40 MB each) are identical except that one is automated, running about 25 minutes. (Click here for the automated version, here for the manual version.) The coverage, from Tuesday, Jan. 3, to Tuesday, Jan. 10, is annotated with explanations of how some papers reacted to the news early Wednesday morning (or late Tuesday night, depending on your time zone) that early reports of the trapped miners being found alive were heartbreakingly wrong.
Along with the PowerPoint presentations are more than 50 stories, at the bottom of this page, written by newspapers to their readers explaining how many of them had the story wrong in their Wednesday editions. A New York Times overview also is included.
A �Read Me� file further explains the PowerPoint presentation. If the full presentation is too long for use in your classes or workshops, you may either delete some slides from the automatic package or use the manual version to show selected portions. Finally, a PDF of the PowerPoint text slides is available.
If you'd like to download the complete package, you can pull down either a zipped file for PC or a Stuffit file for Mac by going to this address (Explorer preferred):
ftp://rjguest:[email protected]/sagopages/
You'll find two files there:
SagoPages.zip (PC)
SagoPages.sea (Mac)
Just drag whichever one you want to your desktop. When you uncompress it, you'll have a folder called SagoPages containing all of the files posted on EditTeach.org.
The login and password for the FTP site are built into the address string. Despite that, Mac users - and, potentially, others - may find themselves facing a dialogue box demanding credentials. If that happens, the information you need is:
Login: rjguest
Password: x27rj
The total download for the PC version is about 84 megabytes; for the Mac, about 106 megabytes. It's compressed only slightly, so that's also about how much space will be consumed on your system.
The entire package was created by Randy Jessee, director of newsroom technology at the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch. He has been a journalist since his freshman year in high school, when he worked for The News-Progress in Richlands, Va. His father was general manager of a coal-preparation plant, an above-ground operation where Randy spent one very dirty summer breaking lumps and cleaning railroad cars.
As a student at Virginia Tech, he was a student assistant in the sports information department. He has worked for The Roanoke (Va.) Times and World-News, the Carroll County (Md.) Times, The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star in Norfolk (Va.), The New York Times and the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel. He is a former president of the Association of Publishing System Users, member of the Society for News Design and the Online News Association, and a life member of the Virginia Press Association, where he has chaired the association's annual news and photo contest for 21 years. He is married to Leslie-Jean Thornton, who teaches journalism at Arizona State University.
SAGO MINE DISASTER STORIES
Albany
Times-Union: TV spin doctors
can make you crazy
Associated
Press: Journalists look
back at coverage
Atlanta
Journal-Constitution: Readers
(and AJC) still upset over mine-story confusion
Baltimore
Sun: News media scrambled
to rectify reports
BBC
News: How did the mine message
spread
Boston
Globe: The truth becomes a
casualty
CBS
News.com: A night, and morning,
of misinformation
CBS
News.com: Plenty of blame to
go around
Charleston
Gazette: Media circus
turns us all into spies
Chicago
Tribune: Sources were credible
CJR
Daily: Misreporting a catastrophe
Cleveland
Plain Dealer: Miracle happened
but not on deadline
Courant.com: Anderson
Cooper's nightmare
Courier-Journal: How and why the
mining story was wrong
Denver
Post: Shoddy reporting core
of miracle travesty
Derek
Rose: Sago mine disaster blog
Duluth
News Tribune: Stopping the
presses last night
Editor
and Publisher: Editors explain
why they announced miracle rescue
Editor
and Publisher: Local paper
says skepticism helped it avoid goof
Editor
and Publisher: Media report
miracle mine rescue -- then carry the tragic truth
Editor
and Publisher: Mine rescue
lessons
Editor
and Publisher: Questions on
sourcing
Florida
Times-Union: Errors and the
mine tragedy
Greensboro
News and Record: Editor's
blog
Houston
Chronicle: Miners story an
example of a pardonable media sin
Indianapolis
Star: Did reporters
quit asking too soon in mine story
Kansascity.com: Say you're sorry,
CNN
Los
Angeles Times: Media take hard
look at what went wrong
New
York Times: A night for stopping
the presses
Newsday: Media
vigilance would have lessened heartbreak
Oregonian: Diligent designers, editors
catch turn of mine story
Orlando
Sentinel: Paper owed readers
apology
Palm
Beach Post: Miracle story defied
safeguards
Philadelphia
Daily News: The bitter
taste of haste
Philadelphia
Inquirer: How the media
got it wrong
Poynter
Institute: Beyond the headlines
Poynter
Institute: Dual-platform
approach to covering the tragedy
Poynter
Institute: Headlines on deadline
Poynter
Institute: Stopping the presses
and getting it right
Raleigh
News and Observer: A night
when good news turned bad
Raleigh
News and Observer: The mine
story, from good news to bad
Reuters: Miscommunication behind
mine deaths mixup
Roanoke
Times: Breaking plates complicate
breaking news situation
Rocky
Mountain News: How the Rocky
wound up with different front-page headlines
Rocky
Mountain News: One Denver paper
corrected its error
Rocky
Mountain News: Year's first
big story offers lessons
Salt
Lake Tribune: Reporters needed
to dig deeper for answers on miners
San
Diego Union-Tribune: Stopping
the presses no easy matter
Seattle
Post-Intelligencer: Another
black eye for media
Shreveport
Times: Short-lived hope
carried in newspapers
St.
Petersburg Times: Circumstances
left many in media with inaccurate reports
Star
Tribune: When the paper gets
it really wrong
USA
Today: A note to our readers
USA
Today: Media forced to explain
Washington
Post: Mine disaster's
terrible irony
Wichita
Eagle: Here's why The Eagle
got it wrong