The last few days, weeks and months have been tough on all of us. Rather than add to our already saturated coverage of all of that, I wanted to talk about a minor player in our newspaper that plays a sometimes overlooked part in our day-to-day coverage. Page 2. That page has long included a collection of material we always hope readers will find interesting and engaging. It has lighter items, but also historical ones, along with a photo and some news briefs that are sometimes on the wild side, but also just interesting. It contains the weather report, any corrections we might have, and the almighty Jumble. Sometimes I think the Jumble is the most important piece of our paper because we certainly hear about it if there are ever any issues.
When the Daily Journal first launched, we had the calendar of events on page 2, and on page 3 as well. The rationale was that people are always looking for things to do. Recognizing that this took up a lot of space, we decided to launch a page of tidbits and move the calendar to the back of the book (what we call the paper). Our calendar is currently on hiatus since the pandemic has put events on hiatus. Yet we still maintain an online calendar with mostly Zoom events.
Page 2 as it now launched around 2002 as “For the Record” as a play on the journalistic term for something fit to be print and also to create an Almanac-like vibe.
You may have noticed some recent changes. In June, the Associated Press discontinued its “Thought for the Day” feature that was usually included in the “This Day in History” file that also has birthdays. Those latter features continued but we discontinued the quote up top since it was no longer available. Some people complained, others just wondered what happened to it. We could have just moved on without it, but it got me thinking that perhaps we could do our own series of quotes. I’m guessing the AP had a big master list of quotes and just pulled from it regularly. Sometimes they were good, sometimes not so much.
So I enlisted the support of two of our interns, Erika Pilpre and Samidha Mishra, to look for and verify a few hundred quotes from across time and the world. We sought diversity of people and philosophy. Wisdom can come from a variety of races, genders, continents, time periods, philosophies and points of view. Pop culture figures could be included too.
Conservative and liberal alike. I think they came up with a pretty good catalogue of quotes and even timed some to holidays. We had a series of quotes about voting leading up to the election and even ones that marked the New Year. A reader who inquired about the absence of “The Thought for the Day” even submitted their own favorite quote and I added it. I’m thinking of opening up to the community as well.
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So if you have a favorite quote, submit it, along with two verification sources. One enjoyable aspect of this exercise is that I have learned that some quotes often thought of as being from one person are often from another. If you want your name attached to it, let me know, and we will include that as well. I only ask that you try not to saturate us with quotes, and just give us a few. We will play it by ear if we need some more. So send them my way!
We also recently got rid of the Lottery numbers. While a few people were upset by that, it was one of those things that we found people looked up online anyway, like TV or movie listings. In its place we put in our top several stories by readership online so our print readers could see what was interesting people on our website and, of course, COVID data.
We have been tracking COVID data pretty closely for months now and decided if it was of interest to us, it might also be of interest, and helpful, to our readers. I do look forward to when such data is no longer needed and we are in the COVID clear.
As you can see, there are many moving parts in putting together a newspaper.
Even page 2 has features that have to be found and verified. But page 2 is an interesting page, and dedicated, like the rest of the paper, to providing you with interesting and useful information for your lives.
Jon Mays is the editor in chief of the Daily Journal. He can be reached at jon@smdailyjournal.com. Follow Jon on Twitter @jonmays.
Mr. Mays - thanks for publicizing page 2 and providing a history to on-line readers. On page 2 a number of years ago, I think on Saturdays, there was a column that included a bunch of trivia and fun facts. Then one day it disappeared and now my Jeopardy knowledge is a bit lacking. I’m assuming it was probably syndicated, but perhaps something in that vein in the future? Keep up the great work.
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Mr. Mays - thanks for publicizing page 2 and providing a history to on-line readers. On page 2 a number of years ago, I think on Saturdays, there was a column that included a bunch of trivia and fun facts. Then one day it disappeared and now my Jeopardy knowledge is a bit lacking. I’m assuming it was probably syndicated, but perhaps something in that vein in the future? Keep up the great work.
Jon
You guys do a great job. Keep on keepin' on!
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Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.