South Carolina editor explains why stock listings cut — temporarily

Carolyn Callison Murray, the editor of the Myrtle Beach Sun News in South Carolina, writes about why the paper didn’t publish stock listings last week, when bad weather hit the state.

Murray writes, “Frequently during such times, newspapers will establish early deadlines to make it easier for carriers to get the print edition delivered, and we established 5 p.m. deadlines for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday’s editions. It worked reasonably well as far as deliveries went, but despite notes published in each day’s edition, by Friday we spent a significant amount of time explaining to readers that no, we have not in fact decided our readers are not smart enough to understand the stock tables and we’ve decided not to run them anymore.

“I’m not kidding, that’s the conclusion one caller jumped atop and shared in a lengthy voicemail message.

“I’m as guilty as the next person when it comes to leaping to the worst possible scenario if worrying about the safety of a loved one, but I try to extend good will when something else has caused me to question a less-than-undertandable action by a person or business.

“The stock market closes each day at 4 p.m. Eastern time, but the information doesn’t come to us immediately upon close of trading. It takes the wire service until at least 6 p.m. and usually closer to 6:30 to get the data documented and shipped to us in the format necessary for publication. A 5 p.m. press time meant that we were unable to include that information.

“It was back in the paper by Saturday, where it will remain unless it’s a holiday that closes the exchange (as was the case on Monday) or we have to make another choice between delivering the print edition and including the stock/mutual fund numbers. In that case, we will again err on the side of our delivery times.”