Top editors at the Chicago Tribune tried desperately to stop publication Tuesday of a prominent feature story exploring usage of a vulgar slang term for a woman's anatomy. After discovering Tuesday morning that the story, which contained a provocative headline, had already hit the presses at the newspaper's Freedom Center printing plant, Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski ordered a team of high-ranking editors to manually pull the section out of pre-printed packages.
The scramble to prevent the story from reaching the street -- common in Hollywood's depiction of the newspaper business, but highly unusual in actual practice, especially at a major publication -- wasn't fully successful. Hundreds of the Tribune's 500,000 or so subscribers received the article, penned by a freelance writer on the cover of the paper's WomanNews section. Tribune editors said Teamster employees eventually forced them to stop pulling the section late last night because they needed to start printing another newspaper.
The article, which ran under the headline "You c_nt say that," was cleared by editors Geoff Brown and Cassandra West, who oversee the paper's Wednesday WomanNews section. Tribune editors said Ms. Lipinski discovered the story was slated to run at the newspaper's regular morning editorial meeting, but the section had already been preprinted ahead of the daily press run.
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The scramble to prevent the story from reaching the street -- common in Hollywood's depiction of the newspaper business, but highly unusual in actual practice, especially at a major publication -- wasn't fully successful. Hundreds of the Tribune's 500,000 or so subscribers received the article, penned by a freelance writer on the cover of the paper's WomanNews section. Tribune editors said Teamster employees eventually forced them to stop pulling the section late last night because they needed to start printing another newspaper.
The article, which ran under the headline "You c_nt say that," was cleared by editors Geoff Brown and Cassandra West, who oversee the paper's Wednesday WomanNews section. Tribune editors said Ms. Lipinski discovered the story was slated to run at the newspaper's regular morning editorial meeting, but the section had already been preprinted ahead of the daily press run.
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