For one day a year, on Kentucky Derby day, Louisville is the epicenter of the sports universe. People who ignore horse racing the other 364 days on the calendar tune in and read up on the most exciting 2 1/2 minutes in sports.
So last night was an extremely bad time for the Louisville Courier-Journal to suffer a printing problem that kept Derby coverage from being delivered to its subscribers and to newsstands this morning.
Electrical problems with the printing press caused Courier-Journal home subscribers to receive only the pre-printed sections of the Sunday newspaper – Forum, Business, Travel, Comics and the advertising inserts. Those sections were expected to be delivered by 9 a.m. The remainder of the Sunday newspaper containing the A-section, Metro, Sports and the 20-page special Derby section will be delivered with Monday’s paper, according to Chris Apel, vice president of finance and operations. About 43,000 copies of the newspaper were run off the press and delivered to subscribers in parts of the state before the problems occurred. The remainder of the newspaper was being printed at The Indianapolis Star. Copies of the full newspaper are expected to be available in stores and in sales racks by later this afternoon.
It has to be extremely disappointing for the staff who busted their humps to get the most important sports section of the year out on time.
