President Barack Obama

When you told me that you were planning on delaying publication of the issue until early Wednesday morning in order to report the election results I thought the plan had disaster written all over it.

But when I picked up the paper Wednesday, I found an impressive looking issue filled with good writing and the most accurate, most timely results of any paper in Humboldt County. You outreported the Times-Standard and Eureka Reporter.

There was only one medium-sized problem in this issue and a few minor problems. You were right to group the election stories in the middle of the issue around the center spread. But the most important story aside from the election was clearly your scoop on Richmond's retreat over the University Center. That you chose the skate park as the lead story on page three made no sense.

Another problem was the unfortunate typo on the Center Spread. I assume that when you headlined the proposition story Yay on 8, Nay on 4, you meant Yae on 8, Nae on 4 and that you did not mean to cheer on the passage of a law that denies gay people the right to marry in California.

The third problem was that although the center spread looked great and read great, you placed the stories in the wrong order. You should have lead the section with the overview of the presidential election. The students in KBR should be second. After that the story on Prop. 8, followed by the city council election.

While both the soccer stories were good, it was confusing to read two stories that dealt with both men's and women's games. It would have been less confusing to have one story about the two women's games and one story about the two men's games.

Even though you reported a large number of stories on tight deadline, the stories were well written and beautifully edited. I saw no organizational problems and some stories carried the best ledes of the term:

The Humboldt Bay Brass Band filled Fulkerson Hall on Saturday with such rich tones that after each piece ended you could hear the sound resonate a few seconds longer.

The moment Obama was declared president-elect, the crowd partying at the Humboldt County Democratic Headquarters in Eureka exploded into cheers, threw their arms around one other and wiped a few tears of joy from their eyes.

If a soccer game lasted only 87 minutes, then the CSU Stanislaus Warriors would have been firmly in control of Sunday's match up.

If you happened to spend your Halloween evening at Redwood Bowl, you saw Humboldt State University's men's and women's soccer play rival Chico State. The night revolved around one goal, two bananas and some spirited name calling.

1.3 seconds is all it takes.
At least that's all it took for 49-year-old Tim 'Old School' Davidson to realize it was time to turn his life around.

Readers respond to quality, relevant coverage. So far, you racked up more than 11,000 page hits for the first 11 days of November, that's an average of 1,000 page views per day, a huge increase over previous months.

Your election effort made Humboldt Now: