Newsroom front desk staff eager to help readers

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BY KATHY RUTLEDGE/Editor, Lincoln Journal Star

The Journal Star newsroom does a lot of things right.

Reporters Cindy Lange-Kubick and Colleen Kenney would not have won national writing awards last week if that weren't so. Nor would the Suburban Newspapers of America have named us 2004 Newspaper of the Year in our circulation class.

We're always striving to get better, though, and one way has nothing to do with awards. It has to do with how well we respond when a reader needs something or wants to make a suggestion.

We aim to be good listeners and we're eager to help when we can. Still, we sometimes toss a reader from place to place, or from voice mailbox to voice mailbox, before landing at the right spot.

A new guy at the newsroom's front desk is making it his business to learn all the right spots — and to be the right spot in many cases.

He's Val Didrichsons, newsroom assistant. Val managed sales and customer service for The Mill Gourmet Coffee for nine years, so he knows something about keeping people happy, with or without caffeine. He's a father of three, a Prescott School PTO volunteer, a custom cabinetmaker and a fisherman.

If you come to the newsroom on the second floor at 926 P St. on a weekday, you're likely to meet him at the front desk. If you need something and you're not sure who else to call, try Val at 473-7232 or e-mail: vdidrichsons@journalstar.com. He doesn't know all the answers yet, but he'll try to get you to the right person.

We also have a new person in charge of calendar listings. Jane Swanson has been an assistant manager of a restaurant, a payroll processor for a trucking company and a courier for a mail company. She's the past treasurer and president of School District 5.

Contact Jane about calendar listings at 473-7246 or jswanson@journalstar.com.

Finally, I want to mention two not-so-new people you're likely to meet at the newsroom front desk:

Joyce Howlett works with several part-time college students — Jaacki McKinney, Melanie Anderson, Lacie Strasburg, Miranda Hobelman — to assemble one of the most important parts of the paper, the obituary column. You can reach them at 473-7311 or obits@journalstar.com.

Joyce has worked for the Journal Star since 1992. She lives in the country with her husband and enjoys her five grandchildren and three daughters. She likes the outdoors, helping with the nursery and Sunday School at Crete Berean Church, and doing family history.

When you pick up the "Celebrate! Nebraska" section in the Sunday paper or click it at journalstar.com, think of Shana McTaggart Bailey. Shana has worked at the Journal Star for five years. It's completely appropriate that her interests include photography, scrapbooking and spending time with her family. Contact her at 473-7302 or celebrate@journalstar.com.

Everybody at the front desk helps out with Celebrate, but Shana is the true champion of this section of announcements. Shana and her husband will have some happy news of their own in October, when they are expecting their first child.

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When I'm listening to readers, I often get this question: Don't you have any proofreaders down there anymore?

What they mean is: Don't you have any copy editors who are expert spellers, typo sleuths, grammarians of the first order and people who know who Abe Fortas was and how to spell his last name?

The answer is yes, we do.

The answer is also: Not like Joseph T. FitzGerald, 86, who died last month in Aurora, Colo.

Those of us who worked at the old Lincoln Journal called him "Fitz." He was a classic copy editor. Kept to himself. Spoke and worked in rapid-fire fashion. Obsessively looked for errors in our stories. If you said 21 counties got federal disaster aid and you listed only 20, he'd be at your desk asking for the name of the 21st. He exasperated us and we dearly loved him.

Maybe this will tell you all you need to know about Fitz' devotion to duty during his 44 years at the Lincoln Journal: He kept his dictionary, his style book and his pica pole in a safe beneath his desk.

Kathleen Rutledge is editor of the Lincoln Journal Star. Contact her after she returns from vacation on July 18 at 473-7334 or krutledge@journalstar.com.