Every Tuesday morning, I see a sea of white on my laptop. Some of the white has disappeared with black writing, color photos and multi-colored ads. These are the 24 pages of the current issue ready to be filled with more news copy, photos and ads, which Steve Edwards, Gary Dow and Chris Izzo tend to and get done before the print deadline in the late afternoon on Tuesday.

Most weeks, it is easy to feed those three layout people with enough material from the supply of news that has, for the most part, already been published online. However, this week the news hole (white space) seemed bigger and the supply was down. Deadlines are deadlines, but in this business, if you need to fill a hole before the printer’s deadline, you take what you can get. I am grateful for the late news releases that came through after 11 a.m., which is about 20 hours after the editorial deadline of 3 p.m. on Monday. They helped fill the white space!

I would rather that the white space be filled with advertising, however, the open pages this summer have allowed us to feature several photographs on our reports of events. As most readers know, those pages … and the number of pages … will fade out as we get closer to late fall and winter when the restaurants and other businesses close for the season and advertising drops. Thankfully, we have our year-round advertisers to keep us in business.

The stress level went down as Tuesday wore on and by 1 p.m., I think we covered most of the white space – or at least had enough news/photos to do so. Thanks Steve, Gary and Chris for being patient with me.