The very first story conference of the year was yesterday afternoon at 5:45PM. Story conference is the planning meeting for the next issue of the paper, where the news, sports, copy, photo, design, web, managing, and executive editors meet to go over all the content that will be appearing with the next issue of the paper. It also gives us a time to discuss what we did well and what we did poorly with the previous issue.

Usually Story Conference is at 4:00PM the night before the issue comes out, but for this first issue, since it’s so large and since we have the time, we had it an extra day in advance.

At many other papers, the equivalent meeting is called a budget meeting, I believe, because the primary purpose is to go over the number of inches of room the paper has for each section. At the DP we do that, but story conference is also our daily meeting to just talk about what every editorial department is doing and keep lines of communication open.I was pretty excited to see the paper begin to come together for the first time this year, and having seen a few of the stories our reporters are writing I’m very optimistic. Hopefully you’ll enjoy this first issue as much as I am, and if you don’t please, please, let us know what you thought so that we can work on doing a better job.Today, story conference was supposed to start at 4:15 according to our new schedule. But like with all new things, there are some rough spots to work out and we’re still waiting for it. Hopefully we can get going in the next 5 to 10 minutes.