Obviously, photography matters and great photos should get room. We never tire of looking at the mountains and our photographer provided a great shot of the mountains with the new field at St. Mary's High School in the foreground. The school went 120 years without a home field, so the centerpiece was on the opening. The story led with the first-day excitement, but also got below the hoopla to explain the costs and identify some of the big donors and money they gave. Obviously, headlines matter and our crew does well, coming up with "Homestead Act" as the main headline on that story.

Sept. 15: This was a Friday, and we have most of our college football preview information in the Friday paper. Air Force did not play that week, so the centerpiece was on Colorado Springs players on the Arizona State team, which was scheduled to play Colorado the next day.

Dec. 15: Fisher DeBerry spent more than two decades as Air Force football coach, so it was a big deal when he announced his retirement. We had covered the declining fortunes of the team and the debate about his future, but it's still news when it occurs, especially when all the circumstances are not explained. DeBerry is often very loquacious, but he read a statement at the news conference and did not answer questions. Our reporting, including use of anonymous sources, indicated he was forced to choose between retiring and replacing his long-time coordinators and he chose to retire. That information came after the news conference. We went to DeBerry's house to make sure he had a chance to comment. The news story was the A1 centerpiece with a "Clouded goodbye" main headline, reflecting the departure. The sports section cover was all-DeBerry except for keys to other things at the bottom. The sports front had two columns and a story about possible replacements. Three inside pages included a DeBerry history page, jumps and sidebars on reaction.

With the USOC and an Olympic Training Center here, we do more with the Olympics than most papers. For the last two Olympics, we sent two writers and a photographer to the Games and we've done a separate section for each day of the competition. Generally, we aimed our pens and cameras at local athletes or issues but obviously we couldn't be everywhere. We also tried – and sometimes succeeded – in working enterprise into the mix. There were one or two days where the enterprise (or travel) meant a staff member did not have a story in the paper, but otherwise they wrote a story or two per day. We wanted the section to be useful and fun, so we tried for some of that on page 2. We also put calendars, TV information, etc., on page 2 of our regular section, so there was some consistency. The other sports news went in the "regular" sports section.

— David Sell

 Back to index