By: Joe Strupp For most Florida dailies in the path of Hurricane Frances, Labor Day weekend was far from a holiday as editors had to adapt to changing deadlines and several Sunday editions were either scrapped or delayed for Monday delivery.
Among the hardest hit were four E.W. Scripps Co. dailies that publish under the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers group, which could not publish two editions on their own and required help from other newspapers.
?I slept in my office for four nights,? Tom Giuffrida, publisher of the Palm Beach Post, said. ?Two nights on the floor when my wife was here; she took the sofa.?
Readers of the Daytona Beach (Fla.) News-Journal, meanwhile, couldn?t help but be a bit confused when it came to newspaper delivery the past few days. Thanks to Hurricane Frances, which hit the area hard over Labor Day weekend, subscribers found some days without a paper and others with too many.
The confusion began Friday evening, when News-Journal editors moved up their regular midnight press run for the Saturday paper to 7 p.m. to beat the incoming hurricane. That allowed the Saturday paper to be delivered, in some cases, late Friday night.
?If we had not done it by then, we could not have gotten staff home safe,? said Doug Davis, circulation director for the 104,000-daily circulation paper. ?We knew we could not deliver in a hurricane.?
So when the storm slammed into the Sunshine State over the weekend, The News-Journal was unable to deliver the Sunday and Monday papers, requiring that they be delivered together on Tuesday, along with the regular Tuesday edition. ?We had so many curfews and evacuations in our area, that we were not able to access most places (Sunday and Monday),? Davis said.
The Daytona paper was not alone.
The Stuart News, Port St. Lucie News, The Press Journal of Vero Beach and The Tribune of Fort Pierce were unable to print their Monday and Tuesday papers after two printing plants the group shares lost power, according to Phil Lewis, editor of the Naples Daily News, another Scripps' Treasure Coast daily.
Lewis said the Daily News published 60,000 copies of a special combined Monday paper for the four Treasure Coast dailies that was distributed free to evacuation centers and other locations on Monday. ?We were getting stories from correspondents who were in evacuation centers and schools and we had to get them by e-mail,? Lewis told E&P. ?They had laptops in most cases."
Editors were prepared to take stories by dictation, but did not have to, Lewis said. But, he added that photos had to be received via analog lines, requiring more than half an hour to download some shots.
Mark Tomasik, editor of the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers, said the Stuart News lost a small part of its roof, forcing editors to work out of the lobby, while two makeshift newsrooms were set up at a Port St. Lucie printing plant.
None of the four dailies had a Sunday edition, Lewis said, although they posted stories on their web sites. The Naples Daily News prepared for the hurricane by beginning its Friday night press run three hours early, at 9 p.m., then printing the Sunday paper soon after.
On Tuesday, the Palm Beach Post stepped into help print 100,000 copies of a 12-page combined edition of the four Treasure Coast papers, according to publisher Giuffrida. The Treasure Coast papers were planning to return to their own presses for the Wednesday paper, which will again be a combined edition.
Palm Beach editors had planned for the hurricane as well, beginning the Sunday press run three hours early, at 9 p.m. on Saturday. But, because of the weather, most of the Sunday papers were not delivered until late Sunday and Monday morning. The Ledger in Lakeland had a similar situation, printing its Sunday edition by Saturday night, but not delivering most of the 82,000 copies until Monday.
?We didn?t even have the carriers come in on Sunday,? said Giuffrida. ?You had curfews, flooding, all that stuff.? The Palm Beach newsroom also has been powered by a diesel-fueled generator since Saturday, the publisher added.
In addition, newsroom staffers were given complimentary meals from the Palm Beach Post cafeteria between Friday and Monday, which included beef stew, noodle casserole and corned beef hash and grits. Many have spent several nights at the newspaper on cots and chairs.
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