News-Record.com

Shortly before 5 p.m. yesterday, several people crowded around a newsroom television watching CNN, which was broadcasting the Scott Peterson verdict live. After the jury foreman said the word "death," they turned away and went back to work. That was all they needed to know.

That was all we needed to know, too, about how the Peterson sentencing story should be played in the paper.

We published a photo on the front page, sending readers inside the paper for the story. The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun in Durham did something similar. On the other hand, The Charlotte Observer and the Winston-Salem Journal put the story at the top of their front pages. (The New York Times and The Washington Post had only brief front page mentions. Our sister papers, The Roanoke Times and The Virginian Pilot, bannered it.) See all the front pages here.

Should we have displayed the story more prominently? Our thinking is that all most readers wanted to know is what penalty Peterson got, and they heard that on television. We couldn't have added any value. Plus, the Peterson case is one in a long-line of news stories driven by television and its 24-hour hunger for content. My feeling about it is captured very well by this column in The Boston Globe. And when we don't feature the war on the front page that often, why would we put the Peterson case?