Metro Desk organized

The following is reprinted from the Nov-Dec 1974 issue of Tower Topics, the Beacon Journal employee publication:

It’s Superdesk

City-State Desks Combined

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superdesk!

After months of planning and a hectic Sunday of shuffling desks around and getting telephones moved, the reorganized Beacon Journal local newsroom operation was launched on Monday, Nov. 11. Called the Metro Desk in formal communica-tions, it had been labeled Superdesk by the staff even before it became a reality.

Without getting too technical, the Metro Desk concept meant combining the City Desk and the State Desk, plus some functions of the Copy Desk, into one operation. Its purpose was to improve the quality of coverage in ,the more than 200 governmental units of our circulation area, and to show the reader in, say, Doylestown, that she or he has many of the same interests and problems as the reader in Kent.

Named Metro Editor was Scott Bosley, who had been City Editor. Tom Suchan was drafted from the Sunday Department to become asssociate Metro Editor.

And at the same time, a Special Projects Desk was established under Pat Englehart, who had been State Editor. Pat heads a team of reporters who specialize in trend stories, in-depth investigations and other special assignments.

Though bugs are still being worked out, the reorganized operation seems to be paying off. A story from one suburban city council meeting disclosed that the price of salt for streets was going down. Instead of the story appearing in one edition focusing on that city, a Metro Desk check showed that salt prices, were down all over the area, and a story was written which was directed to all our readers.

When the Chippewa School District rejected a millage on Nov. 5, and citizens went out to raise the money to keep the school open, Wayne County reporter Jean Peters, who normally would have had to cover that story as well as other activities in the county, was able to call on the Metro Desk's education team for help. The result: A more comprehensive, continuing story about the problems of one school district to which all parents and teachers in Beacon Journaland could relate.

And the Special Projects Desk gave you, for starters, an intensive series on the f-nancial problems and peculiarities of the Greenwood Villagedevelopment in Sagamore Hills.

And to maintain our level of coverage of purely local events in our many communities, a local News in Brief column was started, as well as a restructured Good Afternoon column by Fran Murphey. Both columns change with editions as needed.

"The change two years ago from seven editions to three made it impossible for us to cover the news as we had before," said Editor Mark Ethridge Jr. "And with the increasing mobility of people, we knew that their interests were broader than their own city limits or school district lines. The purpose of the Metro Desk is to serve their changing needs and demands.

"We hope, with the Metro Desk, to make the Beacon Journal not only as useful to our readers as before,. but even more interesting."

[Saturday, October 29, will be the tenth anniversary of the death of Pat Englehart in Ocala, FL, at the age of 70, where he lived for five years after his retirement.]