Day of the duck

Like everyone else on the depleted Daily News staff, I've been busy all evening covering the tragedy of the barge colliding with the duck boat packed with tourists on the Delaware River -- two of them (youths visiting here from Hungary) are missing and may have gone down with the boat -- pray for them. This may show that it's one thing for duck boats to prowl the waters off Branson, Missouri, but another thing to share the road with industrial traffic and massive garbage barges.

Ironically, I was working on a different, long-term story for the paper earlier in the day -- as you can see it's hard to knock on doors, track down people for interviews, or write a 40-inch story on deadline...and blog! It's something we're trying to work out here in the newspaper biz -- I know our incoming CEO is really big on reporters who blog -- but frankly I wonder if we ever find an answer, unless scientists come up with a way to expand the day beyond 24 hours.