Charles Apple

This has got to be embarrassing:

It’s supposed to be jam-packed, of course. I dislike picking on small papers, but, y’know, English is English — it doesn’t change depending on circulation size. And if you can’t get your lead headline correct…

Average daily circulation of the Daily Press of Montrose, Colo., is 5,591.

I’m not real fond of the gimmick font atop the wild art, either. But at least it’s spelled correctly.

Thanks to my anonymous tipster.

Seems like the trend in U.S. newspapers is to show less transparency these days. We don’t report our own difficulties — layoffs or bankruptcies or shutdowns or executive bonuses or newspaper properties going onto the market — anything like we do the other businesses we cover.

But here’s an interesting counterpoint: Four years ago, the tiny Daily News of Bowling Green, Ky. — circulation 20,690 — covered the DUI arrest of a former sheriff’s deputy whose family had suffered tragedy. As you can imagine, readers howled in protest. Managing editor Mike Alexieff wrote a response, saying, in part:

Driving under the influence is the leading cause of fatal accidents on Kentucky roads.

…And yes, if I get a DUI, you can be assured an article about it will be in the newspaper.

So, over the weekend, that actually happened. Alexieff was arrested by a game warden on Federal property — the Mammoth Cave Parkway — and ticketed for:

• Stopping, standing or parking on a limited access highway
• Operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol
• Possession of an open alcoholic beverage container in a motor vehicle
• Failure to maintain control of a vehicle

So what happened? See for yourself, in the bottom right corner of page one:

Not only did the paper run the story of the arrest, but also Alexieff resigned. Effective immediately.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s sad this has happened. But this kind of transparency is good for journalism. We should come clean like this more often.

Find the Daily News story here.

Poynter’s Jim Romenesko blogged this today.

Somebody, cue the music:

The Toledo Free Press Star – a weekly publication in Toledo, Ohio — today published an edition that strikes close to my geekazoid fanboy heart.

Here’s the cover (Click any of these pages for a larger view):

James Molnar tells us:

My editor, Michael S. Miller, energetically decided to cover the 30th Anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back. I thought you would enjoy.

Oh, you know me so well, James. I think the cover subhead — “The greatest sequel of all time” — might be a bit of hyperbole. But because I find the whole edition so juicylicious, I won’t complain.

James continues:

For the cover, we went with poster art we hope everyone will recognize. We had some great shots of Boba Fett but thought it wouldn’t be as recognizable for the casual fan.

As lead designer, I did the layout work and created the special logo.

Here’s the index page, which reveals a number of Star Wars-themed touches. The headline, in particular, is a scream:

The heart of the Empire Strikes Back retrospective is a four-page sequence in the middle of today’s edition. James explains:

Michael decided to expand the spread to four pages. He has been in contact with Lucasfilm and was granted permission to use photos from the movie, along with behind-the-scenes photos.

We ran an essay by novelist and Butler University professor Dan Barden and a story by our comic and entertainment writer Jim Beard. The rest was Michael’s handiwork. He’s the true fan.

Find Beard’s story here, along with the factoids text — below, in the grey box on the right of the doubletruck. Find Barden’s “Dagobah, Nebraska” essay here.

James writes:

On page four of the spread, our pop culture guru Jeff McGinnis interviewed Boba Fett actor Jeremy Bulloch. We reached out to other actors from the movie and got an interview with Bulloch.

That Boba Fetish headline is another stroke of genius.

The interview is pretty good. But the ending is priceless:

“More people talk about Star Wars than probably any other group of films,” he said. “And they talk about that particular scene, going into the Sarlacc pit. And they say, ‘You get out, don’t you, Mr. Bulloch?’ And I say, ‘Oh, of course! I’d stay down there for six months, to get money out of other bounty hunters in the Sarlacc pit, and I’d opened a Hooters bar’.”

Find the interview here.

And here is page 22, on which James used his customized logo again on the paper’s masthead:

Find the digital version of this week’s edition here.

The Star is a weekly product published by the Free Press — which, itself, is a weekly. Read about the launch of the Star here.

Go here to read about a really cool Simpsons Movie tie-in by the Free Press.