'Flint Journal' Editor Discusses Publishing Interruption Caused by Winter Weather
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The other big story we are tracking today is the nasty and cold and snowy weather in the Midwest. We have on the phone with us right now Paul Keep. He is with the newspaper in Flint, Michigan, and he is joining us. Paul, are you with us?</s>PAUL KEEP, EDITOR, "FLINT JOURNAL": Yes, I am.</s>KAGAN: What's the name of your newspaper?</s>KEEP: We're the "Flint Journal." And as I understand it, the weather's so bad you guys weren't even able to publish?</s>KEEP: That's right. Normally, being an afternoon paper, we'd be running our presses right now. And they have not been running and we're not sure we're going to be able to get the staff into the building to run them.</s>KAGAN: So it's a matter of getting the people there because the roads are so bad?</s>KEEP: Right. We got about 14 inches of snow in parts of our county, and the county, Genesee County, that we're in has been declared in a state of emergency and the officials are saying, do not go on the streets or you'll be ticketed.</s>KAGAN: And we're showing -- we've been showing pictures while we've been talking to you. I think this is mainly from around the Detroit area. But it does show how treacherous the roads have been.</s>KEEP: What's ironic is now we've got sunshine and it's a beautiful day. But overnight, the winds and everything else just whipped into a frenzy.</s>KAGAN: And how unusual is it for a paper like yours not to be able to publish?</s>KEEP: Well, we're a daily paper. We're almost 125 years old. And we think there were a few days in the 1950s that a strike may have caused us not to publish, but no one so far has found weather-related closure.</s>KAGAN: Really? And how ironic, too, being in the news business. It's a huge story, we've got a big story to report.</s>KEEP: Right. And we have probably about 15 or 20 of our 120 people in the newsroom that managed to get in, including myself. And we are reporting and we're putting some of our coverage on our online sites, so we're still publishing.</s>KAGAN: That was my next question. Do you have a Web site?</s>KEEP: Yes we do.</s>KAGAN: What is it so we can tell our viewers?</s>KEEP: Well, it's www.mlive.com.</s>KAGAN: Mlive...</s>KEEP: And there's a "Flint Journal" portion of that Web site that belongs to us. And we're trying to get a story about the weather on there as we speak.</s>KAGAN: Very good. Well, we'll let you go. I know you have your challenges, but it was very interesting to talk with you and we wish you well getting the paper back online and getting everybody into work and, of course, staying safe in the meantime. That was Paul Keep with the "Flint Journal" in Flint, Michigan talking about how bad the weather was. They're not publishing their paper today. They can't get all their folks in.