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News by Karnak
Unless they work a Tuesday-through-Saturday schedule (known infamously, as a “swing shift” or, more technically, “Siberia,” most reporters, like other working stiffs, hate Mondays. But don’t you know that Fort Worth Star -Telegram reporters must hate them with a special dread? That’s the day when their work, no matter how important or well done, ends up inside the paper, rather than on Page One. It’s the day when the trivial reigns particularly triumphant and readers are basically told to look elsewhere for news — news whose existence they may guess at from short blurbs here and there.
Thank God the editors make exceptions, however. On Monday, there was Johnny Carson’s obit, taking up almost three-fourths of the front page. Gosh, if it hadn’t been for the Star-T, Fort Worthians — those living in caves and hermetically sealed bubbles — might never have known that the vaunted entertainer had died. The paper did manage a small square at the bottom of the page to tout a story on the school district’s latest imbroglio. A winter storm that killed 14 people got a picture and a cutline. Rumsfeld’s secret spy unit, a declaration of war on democracy in Iraq, dire financial problems for Medicare — inside, inside, inside.
Static liked Johnny Carson, whom stories have described as an “intensely private” man. Bet he’d gladly have given up his Page One space. On the other hand, maybe he’d have appreciated the play — as one comedian to another. We can see a Star-T editor now, holding a sealed envelope to his forehead ...
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