Productions on portions of our weekly newspaper are changing.
As our layout team in Dubuque has taken on the work of layout for a few more newspapers, they are shifting some of the production for our newspaper to free up more times for layout on Mondays.
One of the areas that will be laid out sooner is the legals pages, which have their own deadlines that cities and individuals meet to have publications placed. Layout teams will now work on those pages on Friday afternoons. That is not something new, as the Sun would routinely have a layout of legals pages soon after deadlines for the newspaper. It gives a scope of how many pages might need to be fully devoted to legals publication and, as those are a portion of our paid pages, tells us how much space we may have for the upcoming week for additional content.
The other page that is shifting deadlines is the editorial page. Just like the other publications in our chain, we pride having local content on our editorial page, including letters and columns. Most of our columns are written by locals like Bob Campagna, C. Shenere Hansen Player, Dan Brawner, and editor Nathan Countryman. We have others we run as time and space allow, like Randy Evans and Consumer Connections columns, and the occasional update from the mayors, council and other things happening in town that warrant editorials on top of the news stories in the paper.
Layout wants those columns and other materials in for those pages by noon on Fridays so they can lay those pages out sooner. This is another page that if it is laid out sooner, we know what room we have on the overflow page (Page 5A) for additional news content.
But that deadline shift also pertains to the letters to the editor we receive and when they would run. Most of our letters to the editor are in a format that is timeless, meaning they could run any week when they are received. But it is the portion of the shifting deadline that impacts all of you. If you have a letter you want included in a coming week’s newspaper, it needs to be in the Friday before that page prints and adhere to our letter guidelines.