Seattle's SIFF Cinema movie house has an interesting theme this year for its annual film noir festival: "Newspaper Noir." The series features such titles as "Deadline, U.S.A.," "Scandal Sheet" and "Night Editor," which is described as "One of the raciest and raunchiest 'B' noirs of the forties."

Judging by the movie poster, being night editor is a dark, edgy profession, full of intrigue, guns and blonds. It was probably different back in the 1940s, but based on my experience, the job really isn't that glamorous. The only murder taking place is when I kill out the overflowing e-mail in my in box.

Realistic or not, I love the hard-drinking, fast-talking newsmen and women from the classic film noir and screwball comedies.

This week's reader representative, Marce Edwards, has already taken eight calls questioning whether our headline over the Obama speech story: "A HISTORIC DAY" was correct.

By our style, it is. From the Associated Press Stylebook: "Use the article a before consonant sounds... Use the article an before vowel sounds."

So it would be "a historic day," but "an honorable man."

We do understand that many people grew up learning "an historic" as proper style.

We had a lively discussion at the morning story meeting about whether we're underplaying the Democratic National Convention. We've had it on the front page every day, but other papers - including the Seattle dailies - have been blowing it out.

Deputy editor and political junkie Dale Phelps thinks we aren't giving it enough prominence. "It's the World Series of politics," he says. (Dale's also the sports editor). Online editor Mark Briggs notes that the subject is not generating much traffic on our Web site or even national Web sites. We wonder what readers expect from us. If they watch a speech on TV, do they expect a next-day "game" story with highlights? Do they want more analysis? Do they look to their print newspaper to chronicle history in a way that TV or online can't?

If you'd like to pipe in, comment below.

Also, look for blow out coverage of Obama's speech in tomorrow's newspaper.

We all marveled at the performance of our team in reporting and presenting the annual WASL test scores. Our ace education reporter Debby Abe brought her experienced eye to the stories. Meanwhile reporter David Wickert and page designer Carmen Dybdahl worked to download, sort and present all the local school scores. Other reporters - Mike Archbold, Brent Champaco and Kris Sherman - contributed to the package with district-by-district analysis.

We dedicate a lot of effort and space to the test score announcement - more than most other news organizations. We are curious in hearing from readers about whether they use the newsprint charts and/or if they would rather have an online tool to look up and compare schools.

During our morning meeting, editors discussed whether we should have spotlighted the Michelle Obama speech from the Democratic convention, rather than the Ted Kennedy tribute. (Either way, we should have had a photo of Mrs. Obama out on the front.)

What do you think, readers?

To preempt a question we get every four years: Yes, we realize we are heavy on the Democratic Party coverage this week during their convention. And, yes, we plan to give Republicans the same treatment next week.

It was nice to wake up this morning to the fresh headline "Obama and Biden: That's the ticket." Most of us newsies went home last night figuring that the front page would have gone to press without word of Barack Obama's veep choice. Unfortunately, the paper would have been outdated by the time people picked it off the driveway. We had a plan in place to point people toward thenewstribune.com for the latest.

But our design and copy desk stayed alert through the evening for developments. Front page designer Carmen Dybdahl tweaked the layout several times as veep contenders were eliminated. Finally, about 10:15 p.m. our time, The Associated Press confirmed it was Joe Biden. So the crew - including Dybdahl, wire editor Janice Smith, copy editor Rick Arthur and copy desk chief Jim Kresse - went to work remaking the page. Meanwhile, local editor Matt Misterek posted the story online and sent out a breaking news email alert. The last page was sent to prepress about 11:15 p.m., according to copy editor Bruce Drysdale, who did the newsroom’s late check Friday night.

So, we lucked out a little with the timing - but the team took full advantage of the break to put out the best newspaper possible. We're lucky to have such pros.

As is our habit, the editors spent part of our morning meeting talking about how we did yesterday and what we can do better today.

Some discussion about whether we underplayed ice cave rescue story online and in print. We did put up an online update yesterday afternoon, but it got little traffic online. Probably could have played story more prominently in print and put some of our staff resources into it yesterday. We remain a Pierce County focused newsroom, but we shouldn't hesitate to jump in on a compelling regional story.

Glad we nailed the story on Tall Ships festival deficit. We have more questions about how this happened and what happens next. We're planning a followup for online today and in tomorrow's paper. Let us know what questions you'd like answered.

Like students, parents and teachers, the education team at The News Tribune is getting ready to go back to school. We're in the reporting stages of our annual package that usually comes out Labor Day weekend. Here's what we're working on:

• A story about school calendars/schedules. We get frequent complaints from parents about the hodge-podge of late-start, early-release, in-service days and other school schedule quirks. With several school districts unveiling new schedules, we thought it would be a good time to take a hard look at reasons for and effects of the school calendar. School districts say out-of-classroom time is more important than ever for training and planning to improve school and teacher performance. But how does it affect families' schedules and student performance? If you'd like to share how the school calendar affects your life, contact reporter Kris Sherman.

• A district-by-district roundup of new policies, schedules, schools opening, etc.

• The annual statistical dump of WASL test scores and our attempt to make sense of it. This is due out the last week of August or the first week of September. It takes a lot of work on our part to assemble pages of results from 200 or so schools in our readership area. We've discussed whether we should just refer readers online for information about their school's performance. But we think the ink-on-paper charts are easier to scan and compare than the online presentation from the state, which offers greater depth and graphics.

If you have other ideas, drop me an e-mail.

Thanks to search engines and referring pages, we're seeing some unlikely stories showing up in the daily top ten stories. Among our top stories for the month so far:

#1. Frugality is a virtue, but Postal Service takes it too far (July 2 Dan Voelpel column)

#5. Desire for small cars might carry Chevy Beat from S. Korea to U.S. (July 6 Associated Press brief)

#10. Laid-back bicycling: Recumbent bikes take a casual approach. (June 19 wire feature story.)

In the case of Dan's column, about the Orting Post Office, it apparently showed up on some Post Office related Web sites. The Chevy Beat brief somehow got picked by Yahoo's search engine and is now in the top spot.

Sometimes, we earn clicks from across the world with a compelling story. Other times, it's just luck. Either way, we'll take it.

We had considerable discussion yesterday about how to cover the flap over Miss Washington Elyse Umemoto's "foolish" Internet photos. On one hand, it was a national story (by TMZ standards, anyway) about a local girl and a provocative talker. On the other hand, when we looked at the photos in question, it was hard to work up much outrage/excitement. In retrospect, seems like we played it about right: We centerpieced the story on our Web site yesterday and played it low on today's front page.

Stacey Mulick did a thorough job following up on the $11 million lawsuit settlement in the foster care abuse case. That's a lot of public money and it begs the question of who is being held accountable and what changes have been made to prevent this from happening again.

If you just don't appreciate the combination of engineering and history that make sailing ships so appealing, you're probably going to want to be out of town the first week of July. That's when the boats return for Tall Ships Tacoma 2008.

For the other 700,000 or so of you - judging by the crowds that showed up in 2005 - get ready to have some fun. At The News Tribune, we went a little overboard three years ago with our tall ships coverage - full page posters, pull out guides, saturation festival coverage. Readers loved it and so did we. We've been waiting for them to come back ever since.

We've been plotting this year's tall ships reporting plan for the past six months or so. It's safe to say that this year's coverage will exceed 2005's excessive coverage. Here are some of the highlights:

• We've started this Tall Ships blog to follow the latest about the festival and the ships. As we get closer to the event, it will become our vehicle for live coverage.

• We're creating a Tall Ships web page with archived stories, photo and multimedia galleries and festival information.

• We're sending columnist Kathleen Merryman and a photojournalist to cover the tail end of the Victoria, B.C., Tall Ships festival next week and then sail down from Victoria to Tacoma aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Eagle. You'll recall that Kathleen made a similar voyage aboard the Lynx during the 2005 festival, giving readers a taste of life on board.

• On Sunday, June 30, our major coverage kicks off with a front page preview of the event and a four-page commemorative section introducing the ships and previewing the festival. Our SoundLife section will start its week-long Tall Ships theme, which will include a look at Puget Sound nautical history, modern day pirates and cooking on a ship galley.

• We'll be checking in on the flotilla of tall ships as they head down Puget Sound and assemble in Quartermaster Harbor July 2 in preparation for the July 3 Parade of Sail. During the festival, we'll be offering daily coverage of the event from a crew of about a dozen photographers and reporters.

• Once again, we're planning two-page posters from our award-winning photo staff every day during the festival.

If you have tall ships stories you'd like to see, let me know and I'll see what we can do.

I'm the designated scribe for our daily critique this week. Monday mornings, editors look through the weekend papers for highlights, screw ups and missed opportunities.

Everyone liked Sunday's centerpiece story on where the most auto crashes occur in Tacoma. Reporter Ian Dempsky did a nice job of breathing life into dry statistics by asking readers to talk about their nightmare intersections. Check out the interactive map.

Another fun story: Soren Anderson's profile of Parkland pipe organ builder Paul Fritts. You've gotta see photographer Peter Haley's online gallery.