Behind the Headlines

Covering the Kentucky Derby is the Herald-Leader staff’s busiest and most fun time of year.  I like to call it our annual teamwork exercise.

Preparations begin in February with the formal appointment of the Derby Czar – or, Derby Queen, as we called assistant metro editor Dori Hjalmarson in honor of this year’s special Derby spectator. Dori and her assistants, night metro editor Jeff Beach and features reporter Mary Meehan, who will lead the 2008 and 2009 Derby efforts, spent weeks planning and organizing most of the non-sports coverage leading up to the Derby, as well as the 18-page special sections the day of and the day after the race.

Page designer Jeff Bowen was responsible for the elegant look of this year’s coverage, which included a dramatic preview cover closeup that had readers looking straight into the eye of Street Sense. (Did we call that one, or what?) You can download a copy from the Derby coverage page.

Sports editor Gene Abell presides over the racing coverage, and he and his team spend most of Derby week on the Churchill Downs backside.  Visuals Editor Ron Garrison, a veteran of more than 30 Derbies, and online editor Deedra Lawhead plan and oversee the photo and online coverage.   

The brains behind much of this year’s eye-popping multimedia coverage – online photos, audio slide shows, videos, panoramas and more – was photographer David Stephenson.

Many freelance photographers help us with Derby each year. Others include Dr. Ken Weaver, who with a 600mm lens captured the great image of Queen Elizabeth on page 13 of the Sunday section, and James Kenney and Tim Broekema, the leaders of Western Kentucky University’s acclaimed photojournalism program.

On Derby day, we have nearly 50 reporters, photographers, editors, picture editors and runners at the Downs to quickly capture the event and put it online and into the next day’s paper. They work from two bases: the main press box in the grandstands, just to one side of the twin spires, and the cave-like auxiliary media center near the paddock, where you see reporters Amy Wilson, left, and Cheryl Truman, in this photo.

After weeks of work, the newspaper coverage hits the home stretch between the race and 12:50 a.m. Sunday, when the finishing touches are made to the Herald-Leader’s final edition.  The copy, design and imaging staffs back in Lexington put it all together. Those 35 people also collaborate on a catchy A-1 headline that incorporates the winner’s name, which isn’t always easy. (You know those folks were rooting againt Teuflesberg.)

It’s all a lot of work – and a lot of fun. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Tom Eblen
Managing Editor