The worst-case scenario

When you work with the news, your media can sometimes be fickle. On slow news days, we run an entire front page of filler. On other days, like Tuesday's paper, we have to make room for several huge stories at once.\nI knew balance would be a problem when we found out -- in the span of a couple hours -- that a student had died and an arrest had been made in the Jill Behrman case. To add to that, we had been planning a feature on Ashley Crouse, an IU student who was killed a year ago today in a car accident, to run on the anniversary of her last day alive. That story had been in the works for weeks. It was apparent page one would be heavy.\nThe only consideration I had to alleviate the paper was to hold the Ashley Crouse story for one day. That way, it would still run on the anniversary of her death. But I think the story (written to remember Ashley's last day alive and not just her untimely death) added some context for those grieving the passing of Christine Wampler. It showed how those who went through this one year ago are doing today. For those of you mourning, I hope it could at least help put the situation in perspective.\nTo have bumped any of the front page stories inside or to a later day would have belittled that story and belied the true news of the day. It is utterly unfortunate that these events happened at all, especially that they happened at nearly the same time. But they happened, and it's our job to report the news, however grim it might be.\nI know some were confused as to why Crouse's photo ran so large and Wampler's smaller. The rules of newspaper design dictate that the "centerpiece" story is generally a feature with dominant art to draw eyes to the center of the page. Usually, the top story on the page, a hard-hitting news piece, has some sort of art to run, typically about the size of Wampler's photo. In this case, the art is purely utilitarian -- to show readers who didn't know Wampler what she looked like. Crouse's large photo, the last taken of her alive, then brings readers "below the fold" to her story.\nIt is not ideal to have a front page lacking in balance. It would have been great to have had some uplifting stories anchoring Tuesday's sadder news. Unfortunately, too many bad things happened. Just like everyone else, we didn't like the news. But we have an obligation to report it.