After a front page story, I can die happy

So I’m late to the game here, considering this story ran last week on Wednesday, but I did have my first Page One story of my internship. It was a story I pitched, about the progress Animal Care Services has made two years into a five-year plan to end euthanasia in the city shelter system.

Cue confetti, streamers, etc.

This was a hard story to do. As my editor said, it could have been twice as long, but I underbudgeted (whoops). Also as my editor said, that’s the new discipline — squeezing a lot of information into a small amount of space. Thus, a progress report on two years of city work in 25 inches.

Plus, it’s difficult when you know a story will generate public interest, but isn’t going to generate the type of public interest everyone necessarily wants. I know Animal Care Services was hoping for something more positive — but I report the news, which isn’t necessarily the news as they see it. I was careful in this story to make sure I had someone from the city respond to every criticism because I didn’t want it to be a hatchet job. I also wanted to show that some progress had been made. But whether that progress was enough — well, that was something the public had to decide.

Something I didn’t expect that was a side-effect of the story was that I had several phone calls and e-mails inquiring about a basset hound that was in the photo accompanying the story. From that interest generated, I’m sure he got adopted.

It’s always good to have a reminder that you can’t make all of the people happy all of the time and that sometimes it’s hard to write a story that shows all sides of the issue.

This story was that reminder for me.