Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Just how many editions of the Daily Planet are there?

I seem to recall they mention a morning edition and an afternoon one -- is there an evening or a "late" edition, too?

I'm just trying to figure, if Lois were to file a story around 4PM, which edition it would be most likely to be printed in.

Thanks!

This may just be my imagination, but I believe that newspapers are printed overnight to be ready for the morning edition. So if Lois submitted something at 4pm, it would appear in the morning paper. I'd get a second opinion however..

Yeah, the morning edition would be printed overnight. I've seen it done once, actually, on the really huge roller presses, it's *quite* impressive. But that was ages ago, I'm not really sure they even use these presses anymore.... But I digress...

I'm just confused because they often mention an "afternoon edition" of the Planet, on the show -- the thing is, in my entire life (some 30-odd years), the only time I've ever seen an afternoon edition of a paper here in Montreal was on 9/11... So I was just thinking, either things are just done differently in the States OR.. they have several editions of the Planet anyway. ;-)

I think you could probably wing it, Lara, to fit whatever suits your story. As you say, they do mention an afternoon edition at some point. I'm fairly sure (though don't quote me) that I've mentioned an evening edition in a past story and I'm sure I can't be the only one.

Although I do have to say that I always found the idea that a newspaper would have an afternoon edition fairly odd, I have to say.

LabRat

Oooh! That is a really good question.

I don't have an answer for you, but I'll be checking back to see what others have said.

Coming out of lurkerdom temporarily to answer a journalism question...

I don't remember what the show had to say about editions, so I can't help you there. But I can tell you how it works in the real world.

Generally, a paper of that size prints only in the morning. There are still a few papers out there that print in the afternoon, but that is in lieu of a morning edition. At this point, we mainly use the internet for breaking news updates throughout the day. But it used to be more common for breaking news to be printed and distributed in the afternoon. Now there has to be a serious catastrophe to justify that expense.

However, there are still multiple editions. The farther a paper has to go, the earlier it has to be finished in order to make it to its destination on time.

So the first edition is available nationally/internationally, the second edition goes to the outer suburbs/metropolitan area, the third edition goes to the suburbs, and the final edition is what you find in town. (These are commonly refered to as the "early editions" and the "late edition" or the "final edition".)

Each paper's deadline varies slightly, but usually articles are due by 4-5pm. They are then edited multiple times (by desk editors, copy editors, etc) and finally fitted to the space available for the story. Once a copy editor has a page finalized (every story has been edited, every headline has been written, every photo caption has been edited, etc) they will send the page to be printed.

Sometimes there are late stories. For example, City Council or school board meetings generally do not START until 6pm. Also, sporting events are notoriously late. In that case, work will go on as normal in the newsroom, except that page will be held while the editors await the late story. That way, once that story comes in at 9-10pm, everything else is close to finished and they aren't too far behind. There are generally a couple of late stories every day.

Sometimes, an editor will decide that it's not important enough to wait for the end of a late breaking story (particularly if it's very late). That is when you get stories that say things like "The score was 52-48 at press time."

Because there are multiple editions of the paper, sometimes the late stories finish after the early editions have gone to bed (ie been sent to print). So people in the suburbs get "The score was 52-38 at press time" while those in the city read that the final score was 74-68.

There are also occassioanlly late breaking stories. For example, someone famous dies or there is an earthquate. When that happens, everyone has to scramble to find a place for the news in the paper. Other stories are moved around, something that isn't time sensitive is usually shelved for the next day. This is a FRANTIC time in the newsroom, generally. Once a paper has gone to bed, editors WILL NOT stop the presses. So any edition that has gone to print, is out of luck. But usually, they can still manage to get the breaking news in the final edition.

Hope that helps...
Annie

I totally agree with Annie. That's my experience from the newsroom as well. Spent three months as an intern at a rather large paper in the Netherlands. I worked on the city beat, and our complete last deadline was 1am. But that was only for our 'front' page. All other pages (three or four, depending on the day) had to be ready by then. And if I remember correctly, the deadline for the real front page is between 2 and 3am.

All papers over here have made a decision whether they are morning of afternoon editions. Only a few are still afternoon. Most people actually like to read about the news in the morning, while it's still *new*. The afternoon papers are regional papers, not the biggest ones. It will save them on costs (not many people working during the night) and it old-fashioned, people sticking to the way it used to be. But those papers have a deadline in the late morning. Noon being the absolute latest for the town edition. The early editions are the ones that need to be shipped off to the islands, so they are always a little behind on the news.

With the internet, television and radio these days, it's most logical for a paper to come out in the morning. You're not bringing anything new, or adding to the information people already have.

Hope that's of some use to you.

Saskia

Thanks everyone!

I knew how it works in real life, for the most part anyway (I studied journalism, albeit for radio broadcasting) - I was mostly curious as to whether in the L&C universe there were numerous editions of the Planet and if it was conceivable that there might be an evening one... TV-life is often quite far away from the actual real-life stuff and even though actual real newspapers might not have as many editions, I was kinda hoping I could get away with an evening one for the Daily Planet. ;-)

This being said -- lots of great info that you guys posted. Most appreciated! And I'm sure it can come in handy for others too.

Annie, you just answered something I have always wondered about - I have heard papers refer to the "city edition", but I never knew what that meant. Based on your post, I assume that means the final edition, the one that stays in town. Thank you!

About morning and evening newspaper editions:

Hi! Second posting on Lois&Clark, so, greetings to everyone and congratulations on such a nice message board.

(First posting being this same one on "Topic: FFQ: Newspaper Questions"

The reason I'm posting is because I found the discussion on morning and newspapers' multiple editions fascinating.

I was wondering how did they tell them apart back in the days when there were two editions. I know that printing "morning", "afternoon" or "evening" alongside the newspaper's name would be the obvious answer, but I did some research and found that it wasn't that obvious at all. I took an important newspaper of the 40's (actually from the '10s to the 50's!) the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.

One edition had one star in the upper right front page and the letters XB in the middle of the first division line. The other had three stars instead of one and the letters XJK instead of XB.

I don't know what the letters mean, but making a numerical comparison (one star versus three stars), I imagine the one star edition to be the morning one and the three stars, the evening one.

Any thought on this rather nitpicking subject?

The Daily Telegraph down here has two editions one morning and an afternoon/evening edition. Not that there is much difference between them other than maybe a few extra articles from earlier in the day. The broadsheet ones like The Australian and Sydney Morning Hearld have only one edition and that comes out in the morning. So it wouldn't be unusal for a major paper like The Daily Planet to have two editions. Most often it would only be one in the morning and another for the evening.

Hi,

I'm not sure but, I think there was weekend special edition.

MAF

Our local paper, the Oregonian, has two editions. There's the morning edition (Sunrise edition, IIRC) and the late edition (called the Final Edition), and they're clearly marked on the front page. When I go to the store late in the day, both editions are often sold side-by-side.

The Sunday paper, OTOH, is sold starting on Saturday afternoon. Why? I don't know and can only guess. Maybe people need a jumpstart on all the coupons and store ads that are in the Sunday paper? The ads are the only reason I get one. Then there's another edition that appears later on Sunday.

Just to throw in a little more confusion, the local paper here has morning and evening editions. You can take one or or both. Back in my newspaper reading days we took morning and evening editions. Now I don't take any and they're constantly bugging us to re-subscribe.

Nan

My daughter and I were watching The Rival last night. They show a chalkboard in the beginning comparing the Planet's and the Star's circulation. They mention 3 editions: Morning, Evening and Sunday. I actually had to stop, rewind and pause when I saw it thinking about this topic!!

Julie

Hi,

This is the picture JoMurf said.

http://www.loisandclarkarchive.com/Rival/TheRival56.jpg


MAF