Publisher's Notebook

Newspapers base their success on hustling news and selling ads. (And on selling subscriptions, but this item is about the other two).

News and advertising in a paper don’t always jibe. Take this morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch as an example.

The Metro section has a story about a U.Va. student charged with murdering his father. The alleged weapon was unusual – a 4-pound bowling pin, a memento of a birthday party.

(If you take a bunch of kids to a bowling alley for a birthday party, the honoree gets a free actual bowling pin. All the kids who attended sign it. We have one somewhere in the garage or the attic).

The bowling-pin murder story jumps to page B-8, where you’ll find the end of the obits and the crime log.

Then turn the page. On B-10, there’s the jump of a story and a big, half-page, four-color ad for … Bowl America. “You can be a star at Bowl America,” the ad says. Get info at www.bowlingparty.com.

Boy, that was close. The T-D’s production team was either very alert or very lucky. You be the judge.

The obituaries column in any newspaper, including ours, tends to be pretty sober and sobering.

But from the obits in the Richmond Times-Dispatch yesterday, here’s one that will make you read it twice.

A guy who was 67 passed away. The obit says he “was beamed up by Scottie Friday, August 27, 2010, after a long courageous battle with cancer.”

A serious Trekker? Maybe, but once you learn his name you understand.

His name was Danny Kirk. His nickname: “Captain.”

From the Headlines I Wish I’d Written Department:

Some headlines are so bad, they’re great. The award today goes to the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal likes to feature an offbeat human interest story at the bottom of its front page. Today’s entry is about art of butter sculpting, in particular the butter carving competition at the Minnesota State Fair.

The headline: “When It Comes to Butter Carving, There’s No Margarine for Error”

It’s July and we’ve made the turn on 2010. What were the biggest news stories on our website during the first half of the year? In order of popularity, here you go:

1. Fifteen lawyers leave LeClairRyan. …to start a securities law boutique firm.
2. Wise County judge no longer hearing cases. We broke this story last month. Still ongoing.
3. Dress Codes: What is the prevailing view on associates’ appearance? Last month’s web poll garnered a record response.
4. Court Jester: Johnston explains ‘Why Judges Wear Robes.’ Campbell County’s Sam Johnston published observations from the bench.
5. Law firm sues for unpaid fee…gets it all! A stop-the-presses result from Henrico County.
6. It’s now official: The ‘Shaggy defense’ is a term of art. Slate Magazine picked up on this one.
7. LeClairRyan lobbyists jump ship. …to join the Richmond office of a Pittsburgh firm.
8. Griffith: Mims leads the field for high court. We wrote it Jan. 4; Justice Bill Mims was elected in March.
9. Couple not reconciled by ‘accidental sex.’ Not much more can be said, or needs to be said.
10. Former judge accuses prosecutor of lying in court. In N.C. federal court, ex-federal judge Walt Kelley took a U.S. Attorney to task.

The award for most appropriate headline of the day goes to the Cleveland Plain Dealer (see graphic of today’s front page, at right). The headline writers used one word – Gone. – to sum up the departure of Cleveland Cavaliers player LeBron James, who announced on a hyperventilating ESPN show last night that he was signing a contract with the Miami Heat.

I’m not a pro basketball fan, but I am a newspaper fan. The Plain Dealer’s front page is well done. I have to admit I liked the editorializing in the graphic, an arrow pointing to James’s finger: “7 years in Cleveland. No rings.”

I’m surprised the page wasn’t sponsored by that new (and very real) website: www.fyoulebron.com. I won’t link to it, but type in the URL and it says, pretty plainly, what you’d expect it to say.