A newspaper’s front page is an iconic display of the day’s news — a snapshot in time captured with ink and paper.

On Tuesday, the Danville Register & Bee’s readers were treated to one of the most unusual types of front pages — the single story. Every story on Tuesday’s front page had something to do with fire.

Or, more to the point, three different fire stories.

The first was the most tragic.

Mattie Atkins, 74, and her daughter Janice Guastaveno, 48 died in a fire in their Pittsylvania County home. As with any breaking news story that happens between the newspaper’s press runs, the deaths of Atkins and Guastaveno was up on our website, http://www.GoDanRiver.com, shortly after we got the story and updated throughout the day.

The second fire story — brush fires — taxed our small but scrappy news staff. Early Monday afternoon, the police scanners in our newsroom at 700 Monument St. exploded with emergency traffic. It was a scene of controlled chaos as photojournalist Steve Mantilla made his way out to Richmond Boulevard, Pittsylvania County reporter John Crane drove to Clearview Drive and Danville reporter Denice Thibodeau went to the fire near the Danville Expressway.

Being able to put that many people on a single story at a moment’s notice is an advantage of having the largest single news gathering staff in Danville and Pittsylvania County.

The final fire story came as the paper was being readied for the press. A fire broke out at Woodside Village Apartments off Piney Forest Road. Crane raced to the scene and was able to collect enough information for what we call “a brief” — a short summary of a story. The breaking news was put at the top of the front page and, of course, on our website.

Thanks to the hard work of our photographer, our reporters, editors and page designers, we were able to keep you informed about the day’s big story — fire.
In this business, every day is different — but it’s been a long time since one single story so defined and dominated a single day in the Dan River Region. We were glad to be able to bring it to you.