ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
You have flipped through your supplements of your local newspaper this morning and thought you were reading an old issue. If your Sunday paper carries Parade magazine, as more than 400 do around the country, you would have seen this headline today: Is Benazir Bhutto America's Best Hope Against al-Qaida.
As you surely know, the Pakistani opposition leader was assassinated 10 days ago. But Parade magazine had already gone to press before that with writer Gail Sheehy's story about Bhutto. If you're a careful reader, you might have seen a brief editor's note in the front section of your newspaper - not the Parade magazine - alerting you to the fact that the Bhutto story had not been updated. Parade's publisher Randy Siegel explains what happened.
Mr. RANDY SIEGEL (President, Parade Publication): We have a contract with five printing presses across the country that we do not own. When you're printing 32 million copies, you have different constraints. And it's not like publishing a daily newspaper, it's just simply different. Every week, it costs several million dollars to print and distribute Parade, and I never justified our decision by saying it was a financial decision because it would have caused several million dollars to do. But that's not the reason - the rational for doing it. We believe that what Benazir Bhutto had to say should be heard and this story deserved to be told.
SEABROOK: Still, some readers commented on the magazine's Web site, calling the decision to run the story irresponsible, tasteless and disrespectful. One thing that may have confused some readers is that Parade magazine looks like the newspaper it comes with. It has the papers masthead.
The Chicago Tribune's public editor, Tim McNulty, suggests his paper should perhaps consider whether to drop the Tribune's branding because Parade's deadlines are so different from the Tribs.
Mr. TIM McNULTY (Public Editor, The Chicago Tribune) Our editorial judgment would have been different. We never would have published something ourselves that we had worked on without an update. So we thought of if not as a journalistic issue for us but as a contractual one.
SEABROOK: Now, this isn't the first time Parade magazine has been caught between the news and its early deadline.
Mr. SIEGEL: Around the time of the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy, there was a story that went to press about a White House celebration that created some awkward circumstances because it went to press before President Kennedy was killed.