People often ask me how we decide which stories will be published in the magazine, and then how we decide which of those stories wind up as the main story on the cover.
I wish the answer was more scientific, but it’s not: We simply spend a lot of time guessing about what you would like to read.
Take, for example, our cover story this month.
Our original idea was to write a story about the origin of Valentine’s Day, based on the month’s obvious headline event.
But a story in the Lake Highlands Advocate needs a more specific neighborhood angle than the simple occurrence of an international holiday. We needed a specific Lake Highlands link to Valentine’s Day. And it had to be a link universal enough to capture your attention, but unique enough not to appear in the Morning News first.
So we pondered the possible angles. Was St. Valentine one of the early settlers north of White Rock Lake? Did the tradition of hearts and flowers start at a florist shop north of Northwest Highway? Did the identification of the color red with Valentine’s Day begin with a long-ago senior class at Lake Highlands High School?
The answers to these questions, as far as we could determine, were a resounding “no.” So much for that idea.
Surely, there must be some link between “romance” and “Lake Highlands.”
And then the idea came to us: How about talking with neighborhood couples who truly are inseparable – because they own a business together.
So we began our quest to find interesting neighborhood couples who own businesses, talk with them, photograph them and write about them.
And here it is.
I can just about guarantee you this story won’t be published anywhere else. And that’s the way we like’em.
To Build or Not to Build
Another big decision had to do with City and State plans to build an overpass at Buckner and Northwest Highway, an issue that has been floating around for several months now.
As someone who had dodged three lanes of traffic crossing north from Buckner to Audelia across Northwest Highway, and overpass sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
But our Lake Highlands editor, Carol Walker, pointed out the environmental impact of the plan: Eight park-like acres and 40 existing trees would be gobbled up by the encroaching asphalt, steel and cement byway.
There ensued much discussion in our office about the value of 40 trees and eight acres to the immediate neighbors versus the value of saving a few minutes by being able to barrel through – actually over – what has been a pretty busy intersection.
Economics versus environmentalism. Big government versus the little guy. Progress versus green space.
Questions like these make me glad to be a publisher rather than a politician, because my vote doesn’t count.
Besides, we’re already paying our City Council members the big bucks ($50 per meeting) to make tough decisions like these, right?
Wrangling with a Premonition
Of course, just a few days into the new year, we were forced to table discussion of this issue and make a tough decision of our own: What should the Advocate write about the Wildcat Wranglers western dance troupe, which graduated to the big time last month with a trip to the Presidential Inaugural in Washington, D.C.
In this case, the Morning News already had written about the group’s invitation (it came following our January issue’s deadline), and it was a pretty safe bet that one or more television stations would carry footage of the dance troupe once it arrived in D.C.
So what was left for the Advocate?
Well, as it so happens, we had a feeling something big was in store for the Wildcats, so we wrote our story about the squad last month – way before the Presidential invitation wound up in the mailbox.
Too bad every editorial decision we make doesn’t turn out looking this good.
