Photo courtesy of Bob Rudolph

We got several e-mails Sunday and Monday from the local affiliate of Veterans for Peace. They put together an "Arlington Northwest" display at a park along the Ruston waterfront that was a moving display of the cost of war.

They were upset that we didn't ccover the event for our paper, even though we ran a photo from a similar event in California, on page 3 of the Sunday paper.

Here's Managing Editor Karen Peterson's letter to those readers, explaining what happened with our coverage:

Thank you for writing regarding the Arlington Northwest Memorial erected by Tacoma Veterans for Peace over the weekend at Marine Park. The pictures sent to us by a handful of folks show a moving display on Tacoma’s waterfront.

I have been retracing our steps to see how the event fell below our radar.

The first email I found from an Arlington Northwest organizer was dated August 20 and was sent to our NewsTips email address. That should have prompted an editor to add it to our list of weekend events or to pitch it at our weekend planning meeting, but neither happened. Another organizer called our Reader Representative last Friday, which would have been late in our coverage timeline, but should have allowed us enough time to consider coverage.

We should have communicated better about this event within our newsroom. We are already working to improve that process.

In the future, I’d ask event organizers to add calendar@thenewstribune.com to their notification list. That email goes to Mary Anderson, who edits our events calendars. Mary produces a list that we go through on Tuesday afternoons when we assign reporters and photographers to weekend stories.

For veteran or military events, I’d also suggest they contact our military reporter, Mike Gilbert, at mike.gilbert@thenewstribune.com, or his editor, Matt Misterek, at matt.misterek@thenewstribune.com.

Some organizers were especially upset that we ran a picture in Sunday’s A Section of an Arlington West event in California instead of a picture of the Tacoma memorial.

Inside the newsroom it comes down to a right-hand, left-hand error – the staffers putting out the Nation & World page are not the same staffers who track local events. That’s another place we can work to improve communication.

While covering the local event would have been preferable, I’m glad we at least represented the national effort in our paper.

Some readers suggested our paper didn’t cover the local event for political reasons. That’s not the case. In fact, The News Tribune has covered a number of events sponsored by Veterans for Peace and other local peace groups, including a story and photograph we ran Aug. 27 about Peace Fest in Tacoma.

Additionally, our editorial page staff plans to run a photograph from Tacoma’s Arlington Northwest Memorial tomorrow opposite the editorial page.

While we can improve internal communication, I can’t promise we’ll cover every local peace event in the future. Each weekend, we’re able to cover two or three of the dozens of local events happening. We try to cover the most widely attended and the smaller events we think will be of interest to our readers. We also try to spread the coverage around to different groups and local communities.

Thanks again for caring enough about your local paper’s coverage to write to us.

Today we did something new for The News Tribune. We published three different versions of our GO cover.

Photo Editor Jeremy Harrison came up with the idea. It reflects the fact we visited three different clubs for our on-the-scene fashion story. Our production and press people here at the TNT were crucial in making the three covers happen.

We're already getting positive reader reaction to our triple covers and the inside story. Besides being good work this package does what we try to do a lot of here at the paper: get real people on our pages.

It also reflects the enthusiasm of my co-workers. This story is something I've been wanting to do for a long time and when I pitched the idea to Jeremy he embraced it. So did photographer Drew Perine who spent hours preparing for it, making arrangements and shooting in some tight spots. Reporter Niki Sullivan brought out each person's personality with her interviews. Designer Elysia Smith worked late in to the night Wednesday to make sure all three covers and the inside package sung. David Montesino, Assistant Managing Editor/Visual, arranged for the extra color pages inside GO.

You'll see more alternative content in future GO's. While concerts, movies and restaurants will remain our main courses we want to surprise, entertain and inform you in unexpected ways.

From time to time The News Tribune editors play hookey. That is, we take field trips to various community institutions like Fort Lewis, Western State, Salishan, etc.

Wednesday we took tours of Tacoma's two art museums: The Museum of Glass and Tacoma Art Museum.

Some editors are frequent visitors to the museums. For others it was their first time there.

At MOG Julie Pisto, the director of marketing & communications, showed us through the galleries and the hotshop. Pisto walked us through the art of Jim Campbell who uses LEDs, photography and lights to define time and perception. If you haven't been down to see it: go. It's a fascinating show.

MOG recently shortened its name and narrowed its focus back to just glass. They're getting ready for their fifth anniversary this summer.

Over at TAM Director Stephanie Stebich gave us a tour of the Frida Kahlo exhibit. Kahlo's work isn't on display. It's photographs of her and some recent Frida inspired work by Northwest artists.

TAM is gearing up for its newest show, "Sparkle Then Fade," which opens May 17. The work, from different artists, uses reflected light in various forms.

Some of us will be making return trips to both museums very soon.

We had a few readers take us to task this week for not having the sad story of the demise of the Tacoma Actors Guild online or in the paper sooner than we did.

The story broke on exit133 and the Business Examiner's website before it did in the TNT.

I heard the rumors early in the week and had our arts reporter, Rosemary Ponnekanti, start calling the TAG director and board members. They wouldn't talk to her until Wednesday.

Getting our readers the news as soon as we can is one of our highest guiding principles here. However, one principle trumps that: accuracy. We check out and verify everything we print online or in the printed newspaper. We'd rather be late and accurate than early and wrong.

Until we could get an official TAG executive to confirm the rumors we couldn't print anything. If we were wrong and TAG wasn't closing the harm we could have done to them would be hard to fathom.

I wish TAG, a long time community supported institution, would have shared their painful news with that community sooner than they did.

Craig Sailor
Arts & Entertainment Editor

UPDATE (3/14/2007):
It was pointed out to me that the above post might make it sound like The Business Examiner's and Exit133's reporting was nothing more than rumor mongering. That was not my intent and I apologize to anyone who might have thought that.

The point I was trying to make was that both sites beat us to the story but we still couldn't run it because we needed to independently verify the information from an official TAG source. I just couldn't reprint what other sites were reporting.