The newsroom rode a roller coaster of emotions this week -- high that we could usher a colleague into a well-earned retirement, low that we were saying goodbye to a consummate newsman and cornerstone of The News Tribune.

Rob Tucker worked here nearly 30 years as a reporter, city editor, editorial writer, sports editor, business editor and consumer columnist. (Not all at the same time, although he would have tried if we asked.)

I said it at his retirement party, and I'll say it again now: It's hard to think of anyone who better personifies the values of teamwork than Rob. When asked to provide his 10 biggest stories at the TNT, Rob largely submitted things that he worked on with other reporters: the Sheriff Janovich scandal, Mount St. Helens eruption, Atlas Foundry explosion, to name a few.

In 2003 when I arrived as Rob's suburban team leader, he had been working as the Puyallup Valley reporter for eight years and was probably ready for a change. When I asked him what he wanted to do, he didn't try to set himself up for a career move; instead he said: "I'll do whatever you need me to do."

Rob worked three more years in East Pierce County and his final two covering Lakewood, Fircrest, Steilacoom and DuPont.

The new Lakewood reporter is Brent Champaco, who has covered University Place and Gig Harbor for more than three years.

Our managing editor described Rob Tucker as a "gentleman journalist." Others at his sendoff said they will remember him for his encouraging ways (he only ever got angry at his computer) and deep experience covering floods, storms and local history. One reporter gave this metaphor: Some people are books, but Rob is a whole bookshelf.

Rob's last day was Wednesday. I miss him already.

Puns in sports headlines are an occupational hazard in the news business. And we've been guilty of a few groaners over the years. Here are the post Super Bowl heds that appeared in our pages and in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer today.

Us: "18 and ... D'oh!"
Them: "Brady bunch canceled."

Both headlines require a grasp of popular television from the last 30-some years, but at least ours plays off a program that's still on the air!

A few other observations from editors reviewing the weekend papers:

* In the Business page Q&A today, the chief operating officer of the new Hotel Murano didn't answer the reporter's questions as directly as we had hoped. We also want to show readers some of the glass art that will be showcased in the former Sheraton downtown. Stay tuned for more Murano coverage, possibly this week.

* We liked the good Sunday accountability story by Debby Abe about inconsistent standards for student-athletes in local school districts. Take a look for yourself at some of the reader comments the story generated.

* The Sunday SoundLife section gives a nice, broad report on the various environmentally friendly steps taken by outdoor recreation companies. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that these outfits are greenies, but some of their conservation practices are innovative. Who knew you could run a chainsaw on vegetable oil? We also liked the green footprint that our visual staff came up with. How'd they do it? Outdoor writer Craig Hill put green paint on the sole of his boot, stepped on some paper, and our designers ran it through a scanner.

A few highlights:

We liked the street racing story package: It had a variety of elements of varying size and length, answered most of the questions we had, included lots of content from readers, and followed breaking news in a timely fashion. it also made effective use of a portrait shot by Drew Perine. The young man with his broken car muffler is striking (he looks like a snake charmer), and you can definitely see why racers would favor that stretch of road.

One editor said he appreciated the followup story on the University Place charity that got help with its dumping problem. Makes us feel good to see the power of the press to mobilize volunteers. Watch for more "whatever happened to?" stories in the next few weeks, catching up with people or groups who got headlines in the last year or so.

We at The News Tribune take pride in stories that hold public insitutions accountable: large, medium and small. We had a couple examples of medium and small stories in Sunday's newspaper.

First, Lakewood reporter Rob Tucker sifted through 700 pages of state investigative documents about a counselor on McNeil Island who got in trouble while escorting a child rapist on a visit to Lakewood. The story started off looking at allegations of sexual misconduct, but it went in a different direction that potentially affects public safety.

Second, Pierce County reporter David Wickert came back quickly with a story after something didn't sit right during a public meeting last week. The County Council adjourned for a brief recess after a controversial vote and returned with a different vote total.

Another highlight from Sunday was Dave Boling's column about Brian and Beverly Mauck, the young couple recently slain in Graham. No need to be a sports fan to appreciate this rare intersection of hard news and sports. The column was inspiring, and might even make Seahawks fans feel like they matter.

We welcomed dozens of South Sound area high school journalists to this morning's news meeting. They'll be attending seminars and learning about our craft all day.

Here are some of the reflections on Friday's paper that the students heard:

* Sonics X three = one explosive front page. Was it too much use of the same word? Probably not because they were three distinct topics: professional basketball, military artillery and the reunion of a 1960s garage band.

We liked the Fort Lewis "sonic boom" story because it's framed as more than just boys playing with their gee-whiz toys. Right off the bat, the reporter points out the potential noisy ramifications for neighbors of the Army post.

We also liked the Sonics garage band story. Executive editor Dave Zeeck notes that it shows our music writer has "institutional memory" and a sense of history that predates his years here. Ernest Jasmin doesn't just write about the flavor of the month. Click here to read EJ's blog, including excerpts of his interviews with Sonics bandmates.

* A question was raised whether we could have/should have sent our own writer to the Bill Clinton global warming presentation in Seattle. Kudos to the night crew, though, for chasing down Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma and at least getting a localization on the run.

Here is some of the collected wisdom (or off-the-cuff remarks) of editors assembled to deconstruct the Thursday newspaper:

* We liked the centerpiece about the McKinley Hill renaissance, which succeeds at conveying "sense of place" and "introducing readers to people like me." Glad we could cover some good news coming out of this neighborhood for a change. Unfortunately the name of the woman who co-owns the Top of Tacoma bar is spelled wrong in the photo caption. She is Jaime Kay Newton.

* Some thought that we should have maintained a degree of healthy skepticism about the cat killer story on page B1 today. At least we could have hedged a bit in the first paragraph instead of proclaiming: "And it wasn't the work of animals." We may never know for certain.

* We hope readers take a few minutes to look at our online Halloween photo gallery. Our only regret is that we didn't capture the youngsters out trick or treating in the evening. It was fun to see all the grownups having fun, however!

A few of the discussion points from those huddled at the TNT critique table this morning:

* It was a smart idea by the crime team to come back around on the Supreme Court's Andress decision and see if the "gates of hell" doomsday predicters were correct. Clearly a lot of reporting and research went into this. We'd still like to know how much all these do-overs are costing taxpayers. Maybe that's why the rest of our local court system is so backed up, as a previous story documented.

* Did our newspaper do enough today to reflect the spirit of the Halloween holiday? One person offered that Andress was a fine story, but it was unncessarily forced into a centerpiece hole. This would have been a good day to blow out Halloween with pictures, since it's a highly visual holiday with wide interest for our readers (even if only for a day). By tomorrow, readers will have moved on. Seems like we do more with Day of the Dead in our pages than we do with mainstream Halloween.

* If you haven't checked out our special section on the eve of the Seattle Supersonics season, you should do so. We like the job that reporter Eric Williams is doing on a brand new beat, having to cover the team both on the court and in the court system. It can be hard to follow a reporter who's been on the beat a long time, like Frank Hughes was. This section is well designed and contains items of interest even for the non-diehard NBA fan. A question was raised whether Kevin Durant might have made the better cover story, but at least he gets prominent display on the website. Click here to see it at the top of our homepage.

A few of our discussion points during the Tuesday morning critique session:

* The lead Sonics headline ("First points -- Seattle") didn't play well on the Web, and not much better in the newspaper. Sports editor Dale Phelps says society in general (including the judge in this case) should stop trafficking in bad sports cliches. Great point, Dale! Swish, nothing but net!

* There was some uncertainty yesterday, but the A1 centerpiece about troubles at McCabe's American Music Cafe holds up pretty well. We plan most of our main front-page stories with photographs well in advance, so it's nice to have one that feels fresh and urgent. We did miss an opportunity to refer people to the website for further updates, such as whether the bar was quiet or violent Monday night. We also lacked a map or an address anywhere in the package.

* Inside SoundLife, the Yo! page today (E3) was a headscratcher. We appear to be schizophrenic about the page's intended audience. The puzzles and jokes are clearly geared for the wee ones, but a centerpiece about gay high school homecoming kings?

Some discussion points as we critiqued the Sept. 19 newspaper:

* There was general acclaim for today's reverse-published item from our "Mission to Mexico" blog. Executive editor David Zeeck says it has the quailty of a personal letter written to the reader. Reporter Adam Lynn said the misadventures make it more compelling reading. We agreed that we should reprint the map of the travel route that went with the original story last week. Check out the latest on the blog by clicking here.

* There was some discussion about whether we overplayed the retirement of the Tacoma public works director. Since we can't definitively link Bill Pugh's retirement to recent turmoil at City Hall, editor Zeeck questioned our placement of the story on the front page with the most dominant headline.

* On the Business page, we appreciated columnist Dan Voelpel's update on attempts to thwart the Sound Transit preferred commuter-rail route through Tacoma. We can't write too much about this topic because it has broad interest in Tacoma, Lakewood and other points along the transit corridor.

We took some heat for our Monday story about local Christians reacting to the Vatican's recent pronouncement about the primacy of its doctrine. Perhaps naively, we thought readers would walk away with a sense of local collegiality and cooperation. Instead, a few folks took exception with the article, especially the first paragraph, which said the Vatican "reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church as the only path to salvation."

Two readers said the document says just the opposite, and they quote:

"It follows that these separated churches and Communities, though we believe they suffer from defects, are deprived neither of significance nor importance in the mystery of salvation. In fact the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation, whose value derives from that fullness of grace and of truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church."

To read the full document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, click here.

In hindsight, our use of the expression “only path to salvation” may not have been the best choice of words. And it sounds like a feeble excuse to say that the Associated Press used the same or similar language in its reports on this document.

The Vatican document is very complex. Talk to a dozen different theologians and you might get a dozen different interpretations.

We can’t think of a way to clarify the salvation point that meets everyone’s liking. But we do believe our story, when taken in its entirety, reflects the Vatican's published stance: that the Catholic Church is the one, true church and fullest source of salvation.

We also don't believe our story defames or encourages hatred against Catholics, as one reader claims.

Other Vatican sources:

• Commentary on the Document

• "Dominus Iesus"

• Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution “Lumen gentium”

• Second Vatican Council, Decree “Unitatis redintegratio”

At our morning critique session, most of the time was spent talking about streetcars and fireworks.

Several editors liked the front page story and presentation on Tacoma streetcars. (Click here to read it.) Kudos to page designer Nancy Nilles for suggesting blowing out the route map, since that's what people spent time looking at this morning. Some of us were left wondering what streetcars would accomplish that buses and other forms of public transit have not. Central team leader John Henrikson said there will be time to dig into those questions, assuming this streetcar idea ever gets traction.

We also had a long discussion about the fireworks story on B1. (Click here to read.) This one surely strikes a chord. Reporter Joseph Montes said he could read much, much more on the topic; he wants to know specifically which fireworks will be banned. Our managing editor, Karen Peterson, said maybe the way to approach it next is to tell readers what they still CAN light off for the upcoming holiday -- or where they can go to make things go boom without punishment.

Look for more coverage in our pages as Independence Day draws near and enforcement begins.

The assembled editors, team leaders and other staffers huddled around the table Monday morning to critique our Saturday, Sunday and Monday editions (June 9-11).

Some highlights, with the most recent paper first:

MONDAY, JUNE 11
Kudos to the team leader who coordinated the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium's top-secret beluga mission. And of course to the reporter and photographer who covered it in the dawn's early light Sunday morning. (Click here to read it.) We are disappointed, though, that we didn't do a better job telling readers about it in Sunday's paper, since we had a story and photos on our website early that morning.

The story about the stray bullets in neighborhoods outside the Tacoma Rifle & Revolver Club was popular on our website today. (Click here to read it.) Our managing editor wished for a more detailed map, showing the houses in question in relation to the gun club and the direction of fire.

SUNDAY, JUNE 10
We liked the package on the Toledo, Ohio bridge. (Click here to read it.) Photographer Dean Koepfler catches a nice range of images and moods around his hometown of Toledo. One team leader said when he heard about this story he wasn't sure why he'd care; but after reading it, he did, because reporter Rob Carson does a subtle job of comparing/contrasting with the new Narrows bridge. By the end, you're almost angry that our bridge didn't have more community involvement.

On the business page, the centerpiece about started housing prices by Devona Wells was roundly praised. (Click here to read it.) It was one of the best-read things in the paper this weekend in our households, though we were all depressed about how little you can get for $170,000 or less.

SATURDAY, JUNE 9
Our managing editor, Karen Peterson, said reporter Debby Abe does a good job wading through the WASL high school numbers and giving a clear explanation. (If you missed the story, click here.)

A few of us team leaders wished, in hindsight, that we would have given readers a more immediate summary of election filing week in Saturday's paper -- or even by using a blog or our website to put it out there after the county auditor's office closed Friday. As it was, we waited for our big push until Sunday's paper. You can read about a big Tacoma showdown by clicking here, read a roundup of the most interesting suburban races by clicking here, or see the raw list of nearly all the candidates in the South Sound by clicking here.