Black's Law

Here at the Greatest Newspaper in the Northwest, we have a phenomenon we call "Black's Law," named for a former editor. Since we're an afternoon paper (one of the last of a disappearing breed), we put the final section to bed abuut 11:15. In Murphyesque fashion, all the biggest stories seem to hit after press time. To make it worse, we're Monday through Friday, so if something happens on Friday afternoon, they'll know about it in Nairobi before we can get it on the street.

Of course, sometimes it works to our advantage. We whupped all the morning papers on 9/11, for instance. (It helped that our editor happened to be in DC that day.) There have been other stories that hit in the morning that have been real scoops for us. Sometimes you're the dog, sometimes you're the hydrant...

So now I'm watching the AP wire, as it looks like a man with a bomb in his backpack was just shot at the federal courthouse in Seattle. No details yet as of 1:00.

Why can't these people be a little more considerate in their timing?