newsminer.com

Looking back, I think we — I — should have chosen to put the story of the passing of Battalion Chief Phil Rounds of the University Fire Department on the front page Tuesday rather than on page B1. Chief Rounds was widely regarded in the Fairbanks area’s firefighting community, having spent most of his 34 years in the area as a fireman. He worked as an assistant fire chief at Eielson Air Force Base following his discharge from service and in 1985 moved to the University department, where he stayed for the remainder of his career.

Editors, myself included, often forget that people are what people like to read about.

Stories about the people of a community are what give a paper its identity— stories like the one about triplets being born to parents who already have twins, like those about people who reach the century mark in life, like the one about the passing of a popular battalion chief at a local fire department.

Those are stories that need equal consideration when we talk about what to put on the front page each day.