The Story Behind the Story: Brewfest

Every once in awhile, I'll blog about one of the stories I wrote for the paper. Last week, I took a timeout from editing to do a little drinking on the job ... with my boss ... and then cover A1 in beer stories. I have a great job. (We're hiring. Apply today!)

On Wednesday, Blue Chip Casino was having a media preview day for its upcoming Brewfest. Nine of the 56 breweries who will be at the festival were there for free samples and interviews. It was a shameless ploy for some media coverage leading up to the event. I didn't think it was really necessary on their part (who wouldn't attend an event featuring craft beer of their own free will?), but I went for two reasons: 1) We were probably going to have preview coverage of the event in the paper anyway and this was a good chance to meet some of the brewers, and 2) Our lone reporter (did I mention we're hiring?) was going to be in Las Vegas for the weekend visiting family and we were going to need some stories for A1.

So the weekend before, I came up with a dummy A1 for Sunday's paper with preview stories from the media day. One of our area basketball teams ended up in the state title game on Saturday, so we bumped the Brewfest coverage up to Saturday to make space on Sunday's A1 for game coverage. My dummy front is (clearly) the photo at left above. I sent it to my paginator, Brian Abbott, on Friday night hoping he would come up with something similar for me (and to give him a good laugh). He humored me and copied it almost exactly, even the rounded-corner photo box (which isn't our common style).

All and all, I'll call the stories and page a success. If you want to read the stories, you can find them here, here and here.