Left hand, right hand

When the 6A jump from your 1A politics story says something about a candidate's plans -- say, "Biden hasn't scheduled an appearance in the state ahead of next Tuesday's balloting" -- it's perfectly all right to give your left hand a little bit of a clue on what thy right hand doeth on the facing page:

One of the beauties of the factory model of journalism is that at some point, both of these items should have passed the same spot on the assembly line, at which someone's job it is to make sure that "Tigers 6, Sox 5" in the 1A teaser is still "Tigers 6, Sox 5" by the time we get to the sports front -- or "nope, no Biden" on 6A is still "nope, no Biden"on 7A. War on Editing-wise, that once-vital position is now pretty far forward of the main line of resistance.

Journalism textbooks have often had a tendency to overstate the risks to credibility created by small deviations from the beaten path, particularly in the secret handshakes of the stylebook: No, your audience will not actually flee to the competition in droves should you choose to abbreviate "Rd.," in blatant violation of AP style. (I haven't tested it yet, but I'd be interested in knowing whether Real People aren't more confused by -- or, more precisely, whether they don't see a greater inconsistency in -- the mandate that "Ave." be abbreviated with a numbered address but spelled out otherwise.) Credibility tends to be less granular; here are the scales we used to index it in a study last year:

well trained vs. poorly trained
accurate vs. inaccurate
can be trusted vs. can’t be trusted (α = .913, if you're scoring along at home)

In a vacuum, it's hard to claim that cutting some position -- or taking a step out of the assembly line -- is an economically irrational decision, rather than a cost-benefit calculation that we happen to disagree with. And it is a truth certain that there were blunders -- ghastly, incredible, textbook-worthy blunders -- in the glory days of full staffing and vigilant slotting. But there are examples that make a case for building a few steps back into the process before it all degenerates to (in Roy Greenslade's term) "copy thrown online with a photo." This is one.

And for dessert, there's this perfect Thumb Lede* atop the 1A part of the story:

* Meaning, for the uninitiated, that you can place your thumb over the lede with no impact on readibility or comprehension of the following story.