I ought to know better. I really should.

Starting as a cub reporter for The Bee in 1986, I spent six years chasing “breaking news” in Danville and Pittsylvania County — fires, nip joint raids, floods, wrecks, shootings, moonshine still busts, bank robberies — covering those things was a big part of my job at the newspaper.

You would think I’d know when to use the term “breaking news” on a story being posted to the newspaper’s website. But this morning, I posted a story from a city economic development news release about the reopening of Adams’ Shoe Shop on North Market Street and used the website’s breaking news graphic.

Now, was that story really breaking news?

Here’s what readers of http://www.GoDanRiver.com had to say:

—“Breaking News??? Really? must be a slow news day in D’Ville!” — “Dind”

—“I was about to say the EXACT same thing. I really think the paper needs to be careful what they call “Breaking News”. A huge explosion? The arrest of some horrible killer? A terrible accident of some sort? YES! But, a shoe shop re-opening? Seriously?
“It is quite ridiculous to say the least. The number of spelling and grammatical errors here is also quite ridiculous. Just my two cents!” — “aconcerned”

—“BREAKING NEWS??? You’ve got to be kidding me. Are they hiring 100’s or thousands of people? Call it like it is…..GOOD NEWS…..not Breaking News. Our media at its…..????” — “Amie0”

“Amie0,” let’s not blame this on the news media. Let’s blame in on me, Robert Benson, editor of the Danville Register & Bee.

When I uploaded that story to the website, I put the “breaking news” tag on it. The media didn’t do that. I did.

While I believed — and still do — that this story is yet another sign of downtown Danville stirring back to life, I can’t, and I won’t, deny my role in the mislabeling of the Web story.

I uploaded the information quickly and the text of the story was accurate. But labeling this particular story “breaking news” was not only factually wrong, it also sent the wrong message to our website readers. “aconcerned” was right; this wasn’t a huge explosion, the arrest of a killer or a terrible accident. And as “Amie0” pointed out, this also wasn’t about hundreds or thousands of local people getting jobs.

In downtown Danville, the story was a big deal. For the rest of the Dan River Region, it was just another story that needed to be told without much fanfare.