The mayoral forum and newspaper deadlines

I attended the first half or so of last night's mayoral forum, held at Old Magnolia Sandwich Shop and sponsored by the Palestine Young Professionals Network. All three candidates - incumbent Mayor Carolyn Salter and challengers Dan Bochsler and Bob Herrington - participated in the event, which was attended by approximately two dozen people. The way it worked was like this: Candidates were asked 12 questions, which were written by the PYPN, with order of answer rotated for fairness. Each person was given plenty of time to respond. Also, before the forum began, Palestine High School principal Shon Joseph spoke for several minutes to urge those present to vote for the PISD school bond in the upcoming election on May 9.

It was interesting to listen to what the three candidates had to say, and to observe reactions to each others' responses. You can learn a lot through body language and tone of voice. I won't tout one over another - it's not my job to do so - but I will say that each comes across as smart, successful and well qualified, with different personalities. They obviously care enough about the town in which they live to give up their personal time and money to serve. Regardless of who wins, they're all to be applauded for that.

But I'm chasing rabbits now and need to get back to the point, which is this: I had to leave well before the forum ended, due to our change in deadlines and print times. Just a few weeks ago, I could have stayed for the entire thing, written my story at 1 a.m. if I wanted to, and still made deadline. Our last pages were due to the production people by 8 a.m., with printing mid-morning. Now, our last pages are due by 11:30 p.m. with some built-in "wiggle room" and they're printed a little after midnight. That's why some of you are getting your paper at 6 a.m. now. That's great for getting fresh news on the street when people get up in the morning. However, it means we've got to have a cutoff point in the evening to have time to get stories written and edited and the pages built and checked. It also means, instead of writing an overview of the entire forum, I had to choose something out of what I heard and go with that. Because of the economy and job concerns, I chose to focus on the candidates' responses to the question about the Palestine Economic Development Corporation and its future. Some people like the PEDC, some people don't, but with director Brian Malone officially resigned to take a similar job in Athens, the corporation's future is very much a timely topic and something to continue to watch.

One more note on our candidate coverage: We try not to appear to favor one person over another. That's why the photo from the forum shows all three people, although only one is answering a question. As much as reasonably possible, we try to keep the number and length of quotes about the same, for the same reason. Obviously, incumbents have an advantage in, say, a meeting story because they're already on the council or commissioners court or school board. We also try to run candidate announcement stories and Q&A's at the same place on the front page, with as close to the same size headline as possible. With early voting beginning April 27, we'll begin the Q&A's soon. Keep watching.