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.

The top local stories from Page One of Friday's News Tribune:

– Four decades of neglect have not been kind to the monumental four-story Elks building in downtown Tacoma, nor have the transients who’ve stripped away its antique fixtures, pulled out its copper wiring and left the building’s ballrooms, auditoriums, club rooms and athletic facilities covered with grafitti.

– A brigade of 3,700 Fort Lewis-based soldiers have arrived in Baghdad, part of the Bush administration’s buildup. The soldiers are from the 4th Brigade, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

– About 40 fire inspectors, some from as far away as Nevada, are taking a noisy training course at the Tacoma Dome this week, familiarizing themselves with the safety issues involved in pyrotechnic displays.

The top local stories from Page One of Tuesday's editions of The News Tribune:

- The Puyallup Tribe and SSA Marine are joining forces to develop a massive new marine terminal on 180 acres of land at the Port of Tacoma.

- The campaign to ban soda pop from the South Sound schools is having an unexpected side effect: Student fund-raising efforts linked to vending machine and student store sales are falling.

- Emergency vehicles making routine crossings of the new Narrows bridge should pay the same $3 toll as everybody else, the Washington Transportation Commission recommends.

The top local stories on Page One of Friday’s editions of The News Tribune:

- The state Supreme Court puts a crimp in Lakewood’s efforts to fight crime by forbidding police from randomly checking motel registers for criminals when officers have no other suspicion of a crime.

- With the help of a 70-ton hammer and a few other heavy-duty toys, workers are forcing huge casings deep into the ground for the new Yakima and Delin avenue overpasses.

The top local stories on Page One of Thursday’s News Tribune:

Video cameras at Gig Harbor High School were installed to catch things like trespassers and fights. But the school says it will tighten its rules on security cameras after a GHHS official shared footage of two female students in an intimate moment with the parents of one of the students.

Also Thursday: After Staff Sgt. Chess Johnson was gravely wounded in Iraq, President Bush himself wanted to present the Fort Lewis soldier with the Purple Heart. But Johnson wanted to get the award in front of his buddies. And that’s just how it happened.

Bridgework: State officials have started to sell the individual toll-payment devices most commuters will use to cross the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge. More than 2,000 signed up the first day alone.

The top local stories on the front page of Wednesday’s editions of The News Tribune.

State education officials are investigating allegations that a former Tacoma schools official inflated her professional credentials. Sondra Bright resigned her $98,000-a-year job last month.

Also, two safecrackers worked for hours to open a mysterious 2,000-pound safe found abandoned on a downtown street. When they finally got it open, the contents were less than exciting.

And over on the Key Peninsula, a feud between two members of the fire commission turned violent when one commissioner assaulted the other with a coffee cup, police say.