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March 28, 2007
Chopping and changing
This week's paper is now out on the streets but behind the scenes it was a fairly frantic deadline day at Gazette House yesterday.
We had finally settled on a story about Ken Livingstone's plans to introduce a congestion charge around Heathrow Airport unless control of the Heathrow Express rail link is given over to him as our splash for the Uxbridge and Hayes editions.
The page was designed and subbed and just about to be checked over when news broke that Tesco had failed in their bid to build a superstore in Yiewsley.
This story has been big news in the area with a long running campaign by residents to halt Tesco's bid and, in the past we have increased sale on the back of this story.
The decision was made to lead the Uxbridge edition with the Tesco story and relegate Ken's latest bid to expand his congestion charge monopoly to page two.
With time against us the newsdesk did a sterling job in turning the Tesco story around - but that wasn't the end of the chopping and changing.
We also had a strong news background feature to the Tesco decision almost ready in anticipation of the outcome of the planning appeal.
This was rapidly pulled together as the Gazette's final deadline fast approached and page five of the paper was cleared to get it in.
However, there was one more issue. Having seen the completed page I was not happy with the overall appearance of the feature which, in my opinion, did not really jump out of the page and do itself justice.
The end result was that the page went back to the production unit and was re-designed before finally everyone, including me, was happy with the finished look.
As they say it's all in a day's work and some weeks run smoother than others....
Posted by aseal at March 28, 2007 8:39 AM